A new court filing by attorneys for former President Donald Trump shows that federal agents seized more than 200,000 pages of material in their raid on his Palm Beach, Florida home on Aug. 8.
Previous estimates from federal officials only stated that the FBI took 11,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago. But, according to the latest filing, those documents are comprised of nearly 200,000 individual pages.
Trump’s legal team stated that “a rough rule of thumb in document reviews is 50 pages per hour,” which made the mid-October deadline realistic, based on the man-hours needed to review roughly 11,000 pages.
In the letter to Special Master Judge Raymond Dearie, Trump’s attorneys state they are having difficulty securing a vendor to process the documents because the volume greatly exceeds what was originally stated by federal officials.
“The problem is compounded by the fact that when Plaintiff’s counsel referred to either 11,000 pages or even 11,000 documents during the status conference (we are still awaiting the transcript), the Government chose not to interject with an accurate number,” the letter states. “In conversations between Plaintiff’s counsel and the Government regarding a data vendor, the Government mentioned that the 11,000 documents contain closer to 200,000 pages.”
Trump’s lawyers continued:
“That estimated volume, with a need to operate under the accelerated timeframes supported by the Government, is the reason why so many of the Government’s selected vendors have declined the potential engagement. In short, seasoned IT professionals who routinely work on large-scale document productions with the Government cannot meet the Government’s proposed schedule, and it was never realistic for the Government to suggest such a narrow timeframe.”
Judge Dearie was appointed Special Master earlier this month by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. He was one of the candidates on whom the Trump legal team and U.S. Department of Justice could both agree.
The legal team is requesting more time to process the 200,000 pages of documents obtained by federal authorities.
