The Department of Justice (DOJ) has completed an initial review of potentially privileged materials seized at Mar-a-Lago, the agency informed the court Monday, as former President Trump seeks to block the department from examining evidence collected at his home.
The acknowledgment that the government has already reviewed and set aside items that may be covered by attorney-client privilege could undermine an effort from Trump to stall the investigation.
The notice comes as Trump has sought to obtain a so-called special master — a third party who would review the materials collected to screen for personal property or any privileged material that may have been swept up in the search.
But the Justice Department began that work in the two weeks before Trump brought his suit, using a filter team of employees not assigned to the case to review the evidence collected during the search.
That team “identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information,” U.S. Attorney Juan Antonio Gonzalez wrote in a filing Monday.
A functioning filter team could make it harder for Trump to argue a special master is necessary, and a judge in the case has already asked the former president’s legal team to expand on the legal reasoning in its initial filing requesting the court’s intervention.
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JUST IN: DOJ finds "limited" items covered by attorney client privilege at Mar-a-Lago https://t.co/d4A7E6KdhT pic.twitter.com/lP7KzpAxvj
— The Hill (@thehill) August 29, 2022
NEW: DOJ says the review for attorney-client material seized from Trump's estate has already been conducted and identified just a "limited set" of potentially privileged info.
Trump's bid for a special master may be too late.
w/ @joshgersteinhttps://t.co/smSzUfwF36
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 29, 2022
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