Trump lawyers and DoJ renew battle over documents seized from Mar-a-Lago – live

Kamala Harris chairs the National Space Council and has been at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida all morning, only to be disappointed by the postponement of Nasa’s milestone, though unmanned, test flight of its rocket that, for the first time in 50 years, can ferry humans to and from the moon.

The White House informed the media moments ago that, since the launch was scrubbed this morning because of technical problems, the US vice-president no longer plans to deliver a speech at 12pm, as previously planned.

The next opportunity for the launch of Nasa’s Artemis 1 rocket is early afternoon this Friday 2 September if the engine issue that sunk today’s plan is remedied.

Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff had earlier met astronauts and been given a tour of a lot of the relevant hardware at the space center as well as going out on to the official observation deck to see Artemis as it was poised to launch.

They are now about to return to Washington DC aboard Air Force Two.

You wouldn’t have thought that this would or should be a “fight” these days but as the Guardian has been charting extensively, a battle to stop the erosion of voting rights and to ensure properly conducted elections is exactly what is going on in America.

Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold’s most recent tweet is stark in its simplicity.

She spoke to my Washington DC colleague Lauren Gambino last week and warned that: “What we can expect from the extreme Republicans running [for office in this November’s midterm elections] across this country is to undermine free and fair elections for the American people, strip Americans of the right to vote, refuse to address security breaches and, unfortunately, be more beholden to Mar-a-Lago than the American people.”

You can read the full interview about the threats to US democracy that we published yesterday, here.

And in case there was any doubt about the seriousness of the issue, the Guardian US team collates our coverage on voting rights on a special page entitled The fight to vote, no less. Our Sam Levine in New York does a lot of the reporting on this issue.

The US justice department’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home this month turned up a “limited” number of documents subject to attorney-client privilege, federal prosecutors said in a court filing this morning, Reuters reports.

The DoJ is updating us in gobbets. This is part of its process where intelligence officials are conducting a classification review of materials seized from Mar-a-Lago during a search by the FBI on 8 August.

As the government sifts the materials, a partially redacted affidavit released last Friday made the case, as Hugo Lowell reported for Guardian US, that the FBI needed to forcibly retrieve the United States government’s most sensitive secrets, especially after it came to suspect Trump and his team were holding on to classified documents despite repeated efforts – including with a subpoena – to secure their return.

Most pressing, according to the affidavit, was that the FBI had identified probable cause that documents containing national defense information were scattered across Mar-a-Lago, potentially jeopardizing intelligence gathering and revealing the identities of human clandestine sources.

You can read more of that report here. And here are Hugo’s five takeaways from Friday’s developments.

The Associated Press adds that the DoJ has now completed its review of potentially privileged documents seized in the search.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp ‘must testify’ before a special grand jury – but …

Here’s a pithy take on what’s going down in the lawsuit in south Florida over the FBI search for hoarded government secrets at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

It’s from Harvard law professor Larry Tribe commenting on the federal judge dealing with the lawsuit and a piece in the New York Times.

Federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated by Donald Trump in late 2020, issued an order two days ago that set out the issues and timetable this week involving the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

To refresh, as the affidavit made public on Friday noted: “The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records.”

And as my colleague Hugo Lowell reported, the affidavit indicated that the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago earlier this month after speaking to a significant number of witnesses and finding probable cause that national defense information and evidence of obstruction existed at the former president’s property.

Judge Cannon’s order last Saturday came after Trump sued the government over the search and demanded that an overseer – or special master – be appointed to review what’s going on.

She noted her “preliminary intent to appoint a special master in this case” and set this Thursday, 1 September, for a hearing on the case, at 1pm in federal court in West Palm Beach – just across the bridge over the lagoon that separates the millionaires’ and billionaires’ ocean-facing playground of Palm Beach from the more plebeian West Palm Beach

Cannon also asked the defendant in the case – the USA as manifested in the Department of Justice – to provide on or before Tuesday 30 August, “under seal”, a “more detailed receipt for property specifying all property seized pursuant to the search warrant executed on August 8, 2022” and a notice “indicating the status of Defendant’s review of the seized property, including any filter review conducted by the privilege review team and any dissemination of materials beyond the privilege review team.”

Department of Justice squares off against Donald Trump’s team over FBI search at Mar-a-Lago

US DoJ squares off with Trump team over seized records