b'Just minutes before a midnight deadline, the Justice Department filed a stunning response to former President Donald Trump\\u2019s request for an independent review of the documents seized from his Florida home earlier this month.\\n\\nThe 36-page document is chock-full of previously unknown information, providing an extensive timeline of how the government worked to recover classified material before the unprecedented search of Mar-a-Lago. It is the clearest and most detailed account yet offered of the steps taken before the search and forcefully rebuts attacks from Trump and his allies. It going so far to claim that \\u201cgovernment records were likely concealed\\u201d from prosecutors and \\u201cefforts were likely taken to obstruct the government\\u2019s investigation.\\u201d\\n\\nThe DOJ filing says Trump\\u2019s request for a special master \\u201cis unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests,\\u201d dismissing it as an attempt to slow down the investigation. It also claims Trump has no standing to sue because the records belong to the government, not to him. And, notably, prosecutors placed a photo of some of the seized documents \\u2014 strewn across a Mar-a-Lago carpet with their classified markings plain to see \\u2014 into the public court record.\\n\\nTrump and his allies have claimed executive privilege over the documents, but prosecutors rejected that assertion \\u2014 arguing that executive privilege is usually invoked to protect communications from the legislative or judicial branch, not within the executive branch itself. The prosecution team, led by DOJ counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt, also points out that Trump never once asserted executive privilege or declassified the documents prior to the search.'