The U.S. Dept. of Justice on Monday notified a federal court judge it has completed a preliminary review of all items, including documents and highly-classified documents, and “identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information,” which it will handle according to existing legal procedures.
That announcement likely makes Donald Trump’s legal team’s request for a special master “all but moot” as top national security attorney Brad Moss noted.
Trump’s legal team was mocked in the media last week for doing little to protect their client, and after cajoling from the right wing press they filed a motion for a “special master,” a third party to review all items federal agents seized when they executed the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago.
In a 3-page court filing Monday, posted by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, DOJ adds that it “is in the process of following the procedures set forth in paragraph 84 of the search warrant affidavit to address potential privilege disputes, if any.”
“Additionally, the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (‘ODNI’) are currently facilitating a classification review ofmaterials recovered pursuant to the search. As the Director of National Intelligence advised Congress, ODNI is also leading an intelligence community assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of these materials.”
That motion is signed by U.S. Attorney Juan Antonio Gonzalez and Jay Bratt, the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section at the National Security Division of DOJ.