The Daily Fuckup

The Mar-a-Lago records fight was narrowing in late September 2022 into a procedural test: what, exactly, did Trump’s side say was wrong about the government’s list of seized materials, and when did it have to say so?

Special Master Raymond Dearie answered that first part in a Sept. 22 order. He directed the parties to raise specific disputes, and he set Sept. 30 as the date for Trump to identify any particular items in the FBI’s inventory that he claimed were not seized from the property on Aug. 8, 2022. In other words, the review was moving from broad complaint to item-by-item objections. ([dockets.justia.com](https://dockets.justia.com/docket/florida/flsdce/9%3A2022cv81294/618763))

The second part changed the next day in a separate ruling from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. On Sept. 29, 2022, she said Trump did not need to file a sworn declaration attesting to the accuracy of the FBI’s inventory list at that stage. That ruling removed one mechanism Dearie had used to force the dispute into a factual record, but it did not end the special-master process. ([cnbc.com](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/29/judge-does-not-require-trump-to-attest-that-fbis-list-of-seized-records-is-accurate.html?utm_source=openai))

The result was a narrower, more technical fight than the public rhetoric around the case suggested. Dearie was asking for concrete objections tied to the inventory. Cannon said Trump did not have to swear to the list’s accuracy before that review played out. The rest of the case kept moving on that schedule, with the parties still working through the seized materials and the special master’s next deadlines. ([dockets.justia.com](https://dockets.justia.com/docket/florida/flsdce/9%3A2022cv81294/618763))