![]() “All the other documents taken, even if they claim to be executive privilege, either belong to the government because they’re government records - even if they’re classified, even if they’re subject to executive privilege, they still belong to the government and go to the Archives,” Barr told Fox News last week. That’s particularly true, Barr said, when it comes to sensitive material. That stipulation has created a highly unusual scenario in which Trump, while no longer a part of the executive branch, could claim executive powers over the existing Justice Department - pertaining to documents that federal law suggests should belong to the government.įormer Attorney General William Barr, who served under Trump, has said that while some of the seized documents might be protected by attorney-client privilege, his ex-boss has no right to claim executive power over the others as a private citizen. Perhaps the most controversial part of Cannon’s ruling is the provision granting the special master the power to determine if any of the seized documents are protected by executive privilege - an authority typically reserved for the president. Included in the filing was a FBI photo of documents that were seized during the search. 30, 2022, in response to a request from the legal team of former President Donald Trump for a special master to review the documents. ![]() Pages from a Department of Justice court filing on Aug. But if the court prohibits the FBI from accessing certain classified documents because they might be subject to an executive privilege claim, that process will break down,” Greer added. ![]() “To assess the risks, it’s important for the IC to know who accessed a given document, and they can only get that from the FBI. “The FBI’s investigation and the Intelligence Community (IC) assessments are inextricably intertwined from a counterintelligence perspective,” Brian Greer, a former CIA attorney, told The Hill by email. ![]() It also complicates matters for the FBI, one of the 18 agencies overseen by the ODNI. The revelation has raised questions about whether those materials were found elsewhere in the boxes and if they have been accounted for. It’s a task that has become only more pressing since a DOJ inventory unsealed by Cannon revealed that among the evidence were numerous empty folders that once held classified documents as well as materials designated to be returned to the military. Trump had roughly 10,000 government records at Mar-a-Lago that contained no classification labels.Ĭannon’s ruling does allow the intelligence community to continue its separate review of the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago - a tranche that includes some 184 classified documents turned over in January, another 38 turned over by Trump’s team following a May subpoena and the 100 more confiscated in August.īut critics worry the limitations on the Justice Department could hamper the review led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which is set to assess the potential fallout from the alleged mishandling of the documents as well as the risks to national security. The Justice Department has argued Trump has no claim to any of the documents, noting that anything protected by executive privilege would therefore belong to the government and should be maintained by the National Archives. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)Ĭannon repeatedly argued in her ruling that the appointment of a special master offers “at a minimum, the appearance of fairness,” suggesting the appointed official may not ultimately withhold many of the documents seized by the DOJ. The ruling expects cooperation between Trump and DOJĪ page from the order granting a request by former President Donald Trump’s legal team to appoint a special master to review documents seized by the FBI. Here are five things to watch as the process evolves. The idea is to determine which of those documents, if any, should be off limits to federal investigators based on Trump’s rights to attorney-client privilege and executive privilege. District Judge Aileen Cannon sets the stage for her to appoint an outside expert, known as a special master, to examine the thousands of documents recovered from Trump’s Florida residence after the DOJ’s extraordinary search operation on Aug. The decision passed down by Trump-appointed U.S. Monday’s court ruling requiring an independent review of documents seized last month from Mar-a-Lago is raising new legal questions about the reach of executive privilege while scrambling the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation into former President Trump.
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