The Special Master wanted Trump to list the documents that were taken. WGY? Isn’t there an inventory list from the DOJ? Isn’t that the Gov’t’s obligation.
The Special Master wats to close the door on future wrangling. Trump has made comments that the government was planting documents. That causes the judge to forestall that by forcing Trump to state what was taken, so it can be compared to the list of what the government claims it has.
Twenty+ FBI agents ransacked his home and storage rooms for hours, chunked 11,000 items into boxes, and carted them off wholesale, yet Trump is supposed magically be aware of every single item that is missing, then pinpoint which items out of the 11,000 the FBI has were NOT taken from M-a-L. The judge’s purpose works if we were talking about 10 pieces of jewelry. The scale of this makes it ridiculous.
Yes, it’s the government’s obligation to PROVE Trump had any particular documents they consider problematic for him to have possessed. I wonder if part of this exercise is to force trump to admit he did not have a tight grip on what documents he had, or any sort of inventory. Then the FBI can ask, well how would you know if any sensitive docs went missing? You obviously were not securing them well enough.