Justice Department personnel have completed an initial review of items potentially covered by attorney-client privilege that were seized earlier this month by FBI agents from Donald Trump’s southern Florida property known as Mar-a-Lago, according to a new court filing.
The Mar-a-Lago raid was conducted as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the handling of government records from the Trump administration. The investigation was started after the National Archives found classified materials in 15 boxes of government materials recovered in January from Trump’s team after months of communications between U.S. authorities and the former president’s associates. Among the items found in those boxes were materials related to the gathering of intelligence from clandestine human sources. Revealing such information could put the sources in potentially lethal danger via seeing their identities exposed.
The initial review was completed by a team of department personnel who aren’t directly working on the main documents investigation, and the Justice Department revealed the initial examination of the materials was complete in a court filing connected to a push by Trump for the selection of a so-called special master to take over some of the process of handling the seized documents. A court-appointed special master is a third-party expert. The Justice Department revealing an initial examination of the seized materials is already complete could weigh against Trump’s push for picking a special master. An aim of the initial review of the seized documents was to separate any materials possibly covered by attorney-client privilege.
The team conducting the initial examination “identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information, completed its review of those materials, and is in the process of following the procedures” identified in the search warrant for handling potential privilege concerns, according to the Justice Department filing.
Trump’s legal team filed its request for a special master weeks after the search of Mar-a-Lago was conducted, and after initial filings from the ex-president’s attorneys, the Trump-appointed judge dealing with the matter requested follow-up clarifications on key points, including the nature of what Trump sought.
Trump’s team is claiming executive privilege to try and subvert the examination of materials taken from Mar-a-Lago earlier in August. A May letter from the head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) said the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department indicated there was “no precedent for an assertion of executive privilege by a former President against an incumbent President to prevent the latter from obtaining from NARA Presidential records belonging to the Federal Government” in the event such records contain necessary information that isn’t available from another source. The Archivist outlined those conclusions before the FBI obtained materials that the Archives originally gathered from Trump in January. Presumably, similar arguments would apply now. So far, the Justice Department hasn’t directly argued against Trump’s executive privilege argument, according to The Washington Post. A hearing in the special master dispute is presently scheduled for Thursday.
