a trial without a jury or make recommended findings of fact where there is some exceptional condition or accounting or difficult computation of damages, or (3) address pre-trial or post-trial matters that cannot be effectively and timely addressed by a judge or magistrate judge. Examples Special masters were appointed by US District Court Judge Thomas Whitfield Davidson to investigate allegations of voter fraud on behalf of the 1948 Democratic Party primary campaign for Lyndon B. Johnson to the US Senate. According to Robert A. Caro, the masters would have found that Johnson's 86-vote victory was delivered by hundreds of fraudulent ballots, but the investigation was halted by the US Supreme Court on the grounds that the Democratic Party, not the federal government, was responsible for its primary elections. The usage of special masters in matters involving complex electronic discovery (or "eDiscovery") has been promulgated by the Academy of Court Appointed Masters (ACAM). The United States Court of Federal Claims operates an Office of Special Masters, informally known as the vaccine court, to resolve claims under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Cases involving special masters often involve situations in which it has been shown that governmental entities are violating civil rights. High-profile cases in recent years in which special masters have been used include some in which states have been ordered to upgrade their prison facilities, which were held to violate the US Constitution, which bars cruel and unusual punishment and certain state mental hospitals, which have been found so substandard as to violate the rights of their inmates. Summaries of cases involving special masters are published at Cohen's Special Master Case Reporter. Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig was appointed special master in the Microsoft antitrust case, but was recalled after objections from Microsoft. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appointed Kenneth Feinberg as special master to oversee the dispensation of an $11 billion victims' compensation fund. The Waymo v. Uber lawsuit saw Judge William Alsup appoint a special master to determine whether Uber violated discovery rules in not disclosing the "Richard Jacobs letter." The Mar-a-Lago Documents affair On August 22, 2022, in the wake of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the residence of ex-US President Donald Trump, Trump demanded the appointment of a "neutral" special master to review the highly sensitive documents seized during the execution of the