Justice Dept. has reviewed documents seized in Mar-a-Lago search

The Justice Department has set aside documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate potentially covered by attorney-client privilege, a maneuver that might make his efforts to have an independent arbiter review the materials unnecessary.

The disclosure, which came in a court filing Monday, is based on the government’s initial analysis of the materials. It came as Trump’s lawyers pressed a federal judge in Florida to order the appointment of an outside expert, known as a special master, to review the trove of highly sensitive documents seized in a search of Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club and residence.

On Saturday, Judge Aileen M. Cannon of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida suggested she was leaning toward the appointment of a special master to look at the materials taken by federal agents from Mar-a-Lago. She ordered the Justice Department to respond by Tuesday and share a complete list of documents, some of them highly classified, taken in the search Aug. 8.

Trump’s request for a special master — which was filed far later than is typical — is significant because it could provide his legal team with an opportunity to contest the government’s seizure of specific documents whose ownership, and possibly classification levels, they see as being in dispute.

But the Justice Department’s three-page filing Monday, noting that its review of the materials was completed, threw up a significant obstacle to that request. In the filing, lawyers at the department disclosed that its privilege review team had finished its assessment of the documents and set aside “a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client information,” a requirement that was mandated by the original search warrant issued by a federal magistrate judge in Florida this month.

A deeper “classification review” of the intelligence implications of Trump’s retention of government documents by the FBI and the director of national intelligence is continuing, the filing revealed.

The case involving Trump’s attempt to get a special master has been hindered from the start by sloppy legal work and unusual procedures.

Cannon took the unusual step of issuing a document that signaled her “preliminary intent” to appoint a special master even before she sought the Justice Department’s opinion on the matter or held a hearing on the questions. A hearing is set to take place Thursday in West Palm Beach, Florida.