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US Justice Dept agrees to Trump ‘special master’ suggestion

Photo by US Department of Justice and FBI

AFP

The US Department of Justice will accept the appointment of one of the judges proposed by Donald Trump as a “special master” in the investigation of classified documents seized from the former president’s Florida home last month, it said Monday.

Despite pushback from the department, federal judge Aileen Cannon agreed last week to grant Trump’s request to name an independent reviewer for the case, assigned to look over the hundreds of classified documents taken from his Mar-a-Lago resort in an FBI raid August 8.

Trump is facing mounting legal pressure, with the Justice Department saying top-secret documents were “likely concealed” to obstruct an FBI probe into his potential mishandling of classified materials.

He has denied all wrongdoing, saying the raid was “one of the most egregious assaults on democracy in the history of our country.”

On Friday, Trump’s legal team and the Justice Department each submitted to Judge Cannon the names of two candidates for the role.

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But in a court filing earlier Monday, Trump rejected both of the government’s nominations.

The department said in its own court filing later Monday that it would agree to the appointment of Trump suggestion Judge Raymond Dearie, from the Eastern District of New York, in addition to its own nominees.

Justice officials had originally suggested retired federal judges Barbara Jones and Thomas Griffith, and said they would accept any of the three due to their “previous federal judicial experience and engagement in relevant areas of law.”

The filing also noted the department “respectfully opposes the appointment of Paul Huck, Jr,” the Trump team’s second nominee, a federal judge from Florida, “who does not appear to have similar experience.”

Trump’s legal team did not include the reason for rejecting Jones and Griffith in its filing, saying “it is more respectful to the candidates from either party to withhold the bases for opposition from a public, and likely to be widely circulated, pleading.” 

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It is now up to Cannon to choose whether to name 78-year-old Dearie to the case.

Government attorneys previously opposed Trump’s special master request all together, arguing that an independent screening for privileged material could harm national security, and was also unnecessary as a team had already completed a screening.

In addition to the documents probe, Trump faces investigations in New York into his business practices, as well as legal scrutiny over his efforts to overturn results of the 2020 election, and for the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters. 

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International

Trump to sign over 200 executive orders, declaring National Emergency at U.S.-Mexico Border

Donald Trump will sign over 200 executive orders this Monday, including declaring a national emergency at the southern U.S. border and designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorists on his first day as president, according to U.S. network Fox News.

A senior administration official familiar with the executive actions Trump will sign, and who was authorized to inform the media according to Fox News, said that the president will sign multiple “omnibus” executive orders, each containing dozens of significant actions.

The source indicated that Trump will declare a national border emergency, order the U.S. military to work with the Department of Homeland Security to fully secure the southern border, and make it a national priority to eliminate all criminal cartels operating on U.S. soil. This version of the emergency declaration had previously been reported by CNN News and was also confirmed to The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

According to Fox News, Trump will close the border to all undocumented foreign nationals through a proclamation. He will also create task forces for national security protection, working with officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other agencies to “completely eradicate the presence of criminal cartels.”

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International

Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday the appointment of actors Sylvester Stallone (‘Rocky’) and Jon Voight (‘Midnight Cowboy’), as well as actor and director Mel Gibson (‘Braveheart’) as special ambassadors to the “very problematic” Hollywood.

“They will help me as special envoys to make Hollywood, which has lost many overseas businesses in the last four years, COME BACK BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The Republican lamented all the “problems” he claims Hollywood faces and created this role with the aim of improving the situation from a business perspective.

“These three talented men will be my eyes and ears. I will do whatever they suggest,” he said.

Stallone had previously described Trump as the second George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797) and one of the nation’s founding fathers, during a dinner after his victory in the November presidential elections, where he served as the master of ceremonies.

Meanwhile, Gibson attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing her of having “the IQ of a fence.”

The Republican leader will be sworn in as president on January 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden.

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International

Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan

Diplomatic chiefs from ten Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their “serious concern” over the announcement of a mass deportation of migrants, a measure they consider incompatible with human rights, according to a joint statement released this Friday.

The statement, which does not attribute the measure to any specific country, refers to the announcement made by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to carry out the largest foreign deportation operation in the history of the nation once he takes office next Monday. “The announcements of mass deportations are a serious cause for concern, especially due to their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of human rights and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration,” the statement said, released by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).

The signing countries—Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela (almost all migrant-sending nations)—also committed to “defend the human rights of all migrants.”

This includes “rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle” and “protecting them as a priority from transnational organized crime that profits from migration,” the document adds.

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