Trump news – latest: Trump rages on Truth Social as DOJ suspects ‘evidence of obstruction’ at Mar-a-Lago

A judge has responded to Trump’s legal team’s request for a “special master” – essentially a third-party attorney – to oversee the Justice Department returning any potential private documents seized during the Mar-a-Lago raid.

Trump wants the special master to oversee the review of evidence gathered during the investigation and for the judge to halt the probe until a review.

On Saturday, Judge Aileen Cannon ordered the Justice Department to compile a list – under seal – of what was taken out of Mar-a-Lago.

The judge’s order also signals her “preliminary intent to appoint a special master in this case.”

A hearing on Trump’s motion is scheduled for 1 pm on 1 September.

The former president claimed the Mar-a-Lago raid was among “the most egregious assaults on democracy” in the history of the US.

“Which, by the way, going to places, in a very bad way, it has never seen before!” he wrote on his Truth Social account on 27 August.

Donald Trump is active on his Truth Social platform this afternoon, pondering when the FBI will say enough is enough.

“When are the great Agents, and others, in the FBI going to say “we aren’t going to take it anymore,” much as they did when James Comey read off a list of all of Crooked Hillary Clinton’s crimes, only to say that no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute. The wonderful people of the FBI went absolutely “nuts,” so Comey had to backtrack and do a FAKE INVESTIGATION in order to keep them at bay. The end result, we won in 2016 (and did MUCH better in 2020!). But now the “Left” has lost their minds!!!” the former president wrote.

A short time later, he pushed back on reports that Truth Social isn’t performing very well as a business.

“The Fake News Media is devastated by how well TRUTH is doing so, quite on cue, they are working overtime to criticize and demean it. Actually, many of the big guns in Washington, D.C., are fighting to stop the TRUTH but, they won’t be successful. They are going after the outside financial company, and virtually anybody that walks and breaths, but that won’t do it. They said it is doing worse since the Raid, but actually it is doing MUCH better, up more than 550%. We all love TRUTH!!!”

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz branded millions of Americans set to benefit from some relief from student loan repayments as “slackers” and suggested that if they “get off the bong for a minute” they could become Democrat voters.

“There is a real risk that if you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans and can’t get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand,” he said this week.

Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders fired back, posting a video on Twitter where nurses spoke out about the crippling debt that they face from the education they needed in order to enter the profession.

“No, they are not slackers,” he wrote. “They deserve relief.”

Director of national intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers that her office is working with the US Department of Justice to determine the security risk of Trump possessing White House documents at Mar-a-Lago.

The Justice Depamrtent and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence “are working together to facilitate a classification review of relevant materials, including those recovered during the search,” she wrote in a letter to the chairs of two key House committees.

Meta has agreed to settle a four-year federal lawsuit seeking damages for letting third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access private user data from Facebook, according to court filings.

The settlement – the terms of which have not been disclosed – brings closure to a long-running case alleging that Facebook violated consumer privacy laws by sharing millions of users’ data with third parties, including the now-defunct British firm connected with Trump’s campaign.

A lawsuit followed 2018 reports that Cambridge Analytica paid Facebook app developers for access to roughly 87 million users’ account data, which was used to target users during the 2016 election.

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential contender, ousted four elected members of a school board following a damning grand jury report into the Valentine’s Day 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

“It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance,” he said in a press release announcing the suspensions.

While promoting his new White House memoir, Jared Kushner had some choice words for former Trump aide Steve Bannon.

“Steve really defeated himself, you know. His head got so big he was just doing all these crazy things, and the ultimately just, you know, like a suicide bomber, blew up,” Mr Kushner said in a recent interview.

Read more from Rachel Sharp:

On Friday, a heavily redacted FBI affidavit was released outlining the agency’s rationale for obtaining a warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on 8 August, part of the bureau’s criminal investigation into the mishandling of White House documents.

Magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the release of the affidavit on Thursday, after the Justice Department argued that the documents “would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation.”

The 38-page document does provide key clues about where the investigation could be heading, but there are plenty of questions that remain unanswered, buried in a sea of black ink that blocks out most of the document.

The Independent’s Josh Marcus has the key details:

The Justice Department suspected that the government search a Mar-a-Lago could uncover “evidence of obstruction” on the premises, according to the probable cause affidavit partially unveiled on Friday.

In their proposal for redactions to the affidavit before its public release, federal prosecutors signalled their fears that the ex-president and his allies could obstruct their investigation.

“The government has well-founded concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if facts in the affidavit were prematurely disclosed,” prosecutors wrote.

The affidavit asserts “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found” at Mar-a-Lago.