- The DOJ said it had examined documents retrieved by the FBI from its Mar-a-Lago raid.
- It said only a small number of them were covered by attorney-client privilege.
The Department of Justice has found that a small number of documents retrieved in the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home were covered by attorney-client privilege, according to a court filing.
The finding potentially undercuts one part of Trump's legal defense, which is that some of the documents that the FBI took were protected by this form of privilege and therefore should be shielded from scrutiny.
Trump has claimed that the August 8 raid was politically motivated and that agents took a large number of documents they had no right to take.
He has sought to have a "special master," or third-party official, appointed to identify which documents the DOJ has a right to examine and which it does not.
The DOJ's Monday filing was a response to US District Judge Aileen Cannon's Saturday decision to hold a hearing on whether to appoint a special master in the case.
In the DOJ filing, US Attorney Juan Antonio Gonzalez said the DOJ had already examined the documents using a special "filter team" of officials who were not directly involved in the case.
The filter team "identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information," Gonzalez wrote.
This could mean that Trump's legal team might find it more difficult to convincingly argue for the necessity of a special master to check for this kind of information.
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor specializing in constitutional law, told Bloomberg: "There may be little need for a special master, especially if the filter team acted properly."
Trump has also claimed that many of the documents seized were shielded by forms of executive privilege, which prevent documents relating to private-presidential conversations from being examined by courts and Congress. The Monday DOJ filing did not address this issue.
The DOJ and National Archives and Records Administration are investigating whether Trump wrongly took with him highly classified information when he left office in 2021, and whether he has sought to obstruct officials investigating the matter.
Trump has claimed that he broadly declassified material he took with him before leaving office, and has sought to portray the investigations as politically motivated.