Welcome to The Beat. I'm Katie Fang in again from Ari Melburgh. We're going to start tonight with drama in a Florida courtroom over the Trump classified document scandal.

Trump's lawyers and DOJ lawyers squaring off over Trump's request to appoint a special master.

Someone who's going to oversee the review of documents and the materials that were seized from Mar-a-Lago.

The judge had no ruling from the bench thus far, saying she will have a written statement

in, quote, due course. Attorneys for Trump compared the documents to an overdue library book,

marveling at how the records dispute has suddenly been transformed into a criminal investigation.

Trump and his team have tried all kinds of defenses from Trump falsely saying the top

secret documents were his to then saying that he declassified them.

In court today, the DOJ lawyers were blunt, saying he is no longer the president, and because he's no longer the president,

he had no right to those documents. That ends the analysis. But we might be seeing a lot more

from the search, the judge saying she will unseal the detailed inventory list that was prepared

by the DOJ. And prior to the hearing, Trump out on right-wing

media attacking the DOJ once again.

They took documents and they put them all over the floor. And then they deceptively put out that

picture. And a lot of people think that when you walk into my office, I have confidential

documents or whatever

it may be all be classified. But I had confidential documents spread out all over my far floor.

And like a slob, like I'm sitting there reading these documents all day long or somebody else would be.

It's so dishonest when you look at it.

Trump's legal team might want to try to stop their client from this, but we know that's

never easy with him. While another Trump lawyer is out on Fox News, admitting that guests were

frequently inside that office. I have never, ever seen that.

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