TRUMP’S LEGAL WIN // A judge grants the former president’s request for a special master to review seized Mar-a-Lago documents

Against the full force of the FBI and the Justice Department, former President Donald Trump’s legal team pulled off a remarkable win in court, one not expected by the major media organs.
The recent unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago by the FBI resulted in the law enforcement agency coming away with a haul of thousands of documents. Their clear desire was to keep those documents under their control, deciding on their own which documents might be protected by client-attorney or executive privilege.
But President Trump was unwilling to leave it up to the feds to decide which documents they were allowed to keep and which they weren’t. In federal court, his lawyers demanded that a special master be appointed to review all of the documents and decide which ones could be used.
Many mainstream legal commentators scoffed at the idea. The Justice Department angrily typed up a 40-page brief arguing that a special master was unacceptable.
The legal fight came down to a showdown in Judge Aileen Cannon’s courtroom last Thursday. Federal prosecutors and President Trump’s lawyers sparred in front of the judge. The main deliverer of oral arguments on behalf of President Trump was James Trusty, of Ifrah Law, a Washington, DC-based law firm. The arguments flew back and forth, and the question of whose arguments Judge Cannon found more compelling remained unclear.
Until Monday, that is, when Judge Cannon issued her ruling, compelling the Justice Department to stop using the documents they removed from Mar-a-Lago for their investigations until a special master examines them and decides which can be used.
To understand the implications of President Trump’s legal victory, we spoke with Jeff Ifrah, the founding member of Ifrah Law. Mr. Ifrah, like a number of other people who have been professionally or personally involved with President Trump, is an Orthodox Jew. A resident of the Jewish community in Baltimore, he is not only a lawyer, but he also has semichah.
Donald Trump is being represented by your firm in this case as plaintiff against the Department of Justice?
Yes. Ifrah Law.

But he did hire local counsel in Florida, as well, correct?
One of the attorneys who works closely with his team happens to live in Florida, so she is the local counsel on this case, but she wasn’t hired specifically for that purpose. He also recently hired the former solicitor general of Florida, Chris Kise, who was at the hearing. But the argument was handled by my partner, Jim Trusty. He handled the entire oral argument at the hearing on Thursday.

I find it fascinating that you’re not the only Orthodox Jewish lawyer whom Donald Trump has retained. I know that he has always felt very comfortable in the presence of Orthodox Jewish people.
I live in Baltimore, but my office is right across the street from the White House, where Trump used to live, of course. Whenever we have events on the rooftop, you can see the White House. Sometimes when I’m looking at that view, I say to myself, “My parents came here on a boat in the 1950s, and here I am across the street from the White House,” and now my firm is working for the president. The things that Hashem can do are beyond amazing.

And you learned in yeshivah?
I received my semichah from YU as well as from Rav Mordechai Eliyahu when I was in Eretz Yisrael.

David Schoen, who is also an Orthodox Jew, represented Trump during the impeachment trial in the Senate. But I don’t think he has semichah, so you might be the first rabbi to represent Trump.
Interestingly, about 20 years ago I was stuck in Atlanta because I had a trial there. I knew the local rabbi because he was married to someone from Buffalo, where I had grown up, so I asked him if he knew of someone who could host me, and he said, “Call David, he always takes people in.” So that’s how I met him. It turned out that his wife’s brother had been my roommate in Yerushalayim. I told David recently that it’s funny that we met 20 years ago, and now we’re discussing the president’s cases.

David made the news for drinking water, but he, David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt all told me how comfortable they were working with Trump. Jason told me that on Erev Shabbos Trump would ask him if he has to go home yet for Shabbos, and he would be concerned for him.
Yes. I used to see Jason on the train out of DC sometimes. I’ve also heard a lot of positive stories.

When did you receive the court’s decision?
We got it at 11:45 this morning [Monday].

During the hearing, the judge had indicated that she might grant your request for a special master. Were you surprised at all by the decision?
I think that all the news was reporting that she seemed inclined to grant some sort of relief that we requested, but you never know. Sometimes you go into a court where the judge seems to be leaning one way, but when you receive the decision, it’s completely the opposite. I think that the whole team was happy and surprised in a good way. I was very happy to see that she took on not just one issue but multiple ones that had been raised by the government in their brief, including the somewhat novel notion that a person doesn’t have standing to challenge the seizure of documents from his own home. That position was so over the top that it really called out for a response. I was really gratified that she did address that.

To read more, subscribe to Ami