Former US President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-A-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida on August 9, 2022.
Giorgio Viera | AFP | beautiful pictures
Some of the documents seized during the FBI’s raid on the home of former President Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago may be protected by attorney-client privilege, the Justice Department said Monday.
A “limited set” of potentially privileged information has been identified by a team separate from the investigative team that searched Trump’s vacation home in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug.
The so-called Privilege Review Team “has completed its review of such documents” and is following a process to “resolve potential privilege disputes, if any,” DOJ officials said in a statement. court filing on Monday morning.
Attorney-client privilege generally refers to the legal doctrine that protects the confidentiality of communications between attorneys and their clients. Court records do not provide details about potentially privileged documents.
The filing in the United States District Court in southern Florida came a week later Trump sued to block DOJ from further investigating any documents taken during the raid until a court-appointed “special master” can review them.
Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, made the announcement Saturday about her “preliminary intent to appoint a special employer” in the case. Cannon ordered the government to publicly respond to Trump on Tuesday. She also asked the DOJ to submit a stamped file that provides more details about the seized documents and its review status.
In response, the DOJ’s top counterintelligence official Jay Bratt assured the judge that the government would comply with those orders.
Trump’s civil case is being overseen by a judge different from the one who approved the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. Oath for that search warriort – in which an FBI agent explains why the government may have reason to believe the search will uncover illegal evidence – was released Friday, despite numerous transactions. .
The National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago in January. The following month, NARA sent a recommendation to the DOJ that the file contained “top secret material interspersed with other records,” according to the affidavit. By law, the president’s records must be transferred to the National Archives when the president leaves office.
The FBI opened a criminal investigation and discovered that 15 boxes included 184 specific documents marked as top secret, 67 of which were marked “confidential”, 92 were marked as “secret”. confidential” and 25 marked “top secret”, according to the affidavit.
The search warrant was revealed days after the FBI entered Mar-a-Lago in August. It indicated that FBI agents were searching for documents showing violations of anti-obstruction and deletion laws. official records, as well as the US Espionage Act.
The FBI took away at least 20 boxes of items during the August raid, including multiple sets of top-secret documents, according to property receipts also made public by the DOJ.
