Former President Donald J. Trump and his lawyers were due on Friday to file court papers clarifying a request this week seeking an independent arbiter to review the hundreds of pages of sensitive documents that were seized during the search of his Florida residence.
The case was filed separately from the one concerning the release of the redacted affidavit used to justify the search, but the request pertains to the same search.
Mr. Trump’s legal team filed on Monday an initial version of the request for the arbiter, known as a special master. In the filing, the former president’s lawyers said that one was needed to weed out any records taken by investigators that should have been protected by executive privilege.
But the filing — styled as a “motion for judicial oversight and additional relief” — was so confusing and full of bluster that Judge Aileen M. Cannon issued an unusual order on Tuesday afternoon asking for clarification on several basic legal issues.
As a preliminary matter, Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump and works out of the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., wanted to know why she should have jurisdiction over the filing. Another federal judge, Bruce E. Reinhart, who works in the West Palm Beach federal courthouse, was handling a complex series of issues surrounding the Mar-a-Lago search. Chief among them was the release of the redacted warrant affidavit.
Judge Cannon also asked Mr. Trump’s lawyers what exactly they wanted her to do. The original filing seemed, in part, to challenge the search of Mar-a-Lago on Fourth Amendment grounds but never asked for any legal relief based on the amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. The papers were filled with complaints that Mr. Trump had often been treated unfairly by the government — and even mentioned the former president’s polling numbers — and read more like a news release than a formal court document.
Judge Cannon gave Mr. Trump’s lawyers until the end of the day on Friday to answer her questions.
