The Department of Justice reviewed documents obtained during the Mar-a-Lago Search

The Justice Department has set aside documents seized from former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida estate as potentially protected by attorney-client privilege, a measure that could lead him to try to claim Request an independent arbitrator to review unnecessary documents.

The disclosure, filed in court on Monday, is based on the government’s initial analysis of the documents. It happened when Mr. Trump’s lawyers pressed a federal judge in Florida to order the appointment of an outside expert, called special masterto examine a trove of highly sensitive documents seized during the search of Mar-a-Lago, the private club and the former president’s residence.

On Saturday, Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida recommended that she inclined to appoint a special master to view documents obtained by federal agents from Mar-a-Lago. She asked the Justice Department to respond on Tuesday and share the full list of documents, some highly classified, included in the search August 8.

Mr. Trump’s request for a special aggregate – filed much later than usual – is important because it could give his legal team the opportunity to dispute the government’s seizure of assets. specific data to which they have ownership and possibly the taxonomy level. are in dispute.

But the Justice Department’s three-page filing on Monday, which noted that the review of the completed documents, posed a significant setback to that request. In the application, attorneys at the department revealed that their privileged review team had completed a review of the documents and set aside “a limited set of documents that potentially contain attorney-client information,” a request authorized by the original search warrant. by a federal magistrate judge in Florida this month.

Disclosure profile. The government affidavit, filed to justify the search, reveals concern in the intelligence community that Mr. Trump was in possession of top secret documents. could compromise “secret human sources” collect information abroad.

In both court papers and public statements, Mr Trump and his lawyers argued that some of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago could be protected by executive privilege. , a vestige of when he served as president. But legal scholars and some judges have expressed skepticism that former presidents can unilaterally assert executive privilege over records from their time in the White House. Scholars and judges say that power often rests with the sitting president.

While Mr. Trump and his legal team have advanced arguments for executive privilege, most of the cases they cite in the filing require a special whole involving independent review of documents are seized for those protected by attorney-client privilege.

The lawsuit regarding Mr. Trump’s attempt to obtain an exceptional master’s degree was thwarted from the outset by sloppy legal work and irregular procedures. That happened, in part, because a special master search request was filed separately from a deeply related issue: the court fought over unsealed portions of the affidavit. used to justify a search of Mar-a-Lago.

Last week, after receiving an initial attempt by Mr. Trump’s attorneys to claim a special employer, Judge Cannon asked them, in a rare rebuke, to send her explain exactly what they are asking for and why she should handle the case and not the Judge. Bruce E. Einhart, who handled the unsealing of the subpoena.

Then, after she received additional filings from Mr. Trump’s legal team in response to her questions, Judge Cannon took the unusual step of issuing a document signaling “immediate intent.” her ministry” was to appoint a special expert even before she sought the Justice Department’s opinion on the matter or held a hearing on the questions. A hearing will take place on Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Ahead of the hearing, the Justice Department is also expected to file a detailed inventory of seized documents on Tuesday. But that list, which goes further than nominally described in the search warrant sealed this month, will be sealed.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and department leaders have yet to decide whether they will seek to destroy the document, according to officials.

Judge Cannon will now have access to a government review of the documents and she may have the information she needs to rule on Trump’s team’s requests to exclude individual documents. .