Magistrate agrees to appoint a special expert to review the documents seized from Trump

A federal judge agreed on Monday to appoint a special expert to review the documents seized by the FBI during its search of the former president’s estate. Donald Trump in Florida, in a move that could potentially delay the ongoing criminal investigation of the Justice Department.

In her ruling, District Judge Aileen Cannon of West Palm Beach, Florida, said the court authorized the appointment to review personal items, documents and material subject to attorney-client privilege claims. Cannon was appointed by Trump in 2020, just months before leaving office.

Cannon’s order allows intelligence officials to move forward with their review of possible harm to national security in the investigation.

Trump accused the Justice Department of launching a partisan witch hunt against him, and his lawyers argued that appointing an independent third party to review the materials would be a good way to rein in the government.

The former Republican president is being investigated for having removed from the White House, after his departure in January 2021, government files, some of them marked as highly classified, and having stored them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

The Justice Department has also said it is investigating possible obstruction after the FBI uncovered evidence that Trump’s team may have deliberately withheld classified documents when agents tried to retrieve them in June.

At that June 3 meeting, Trump representatives falsely certified that they had conducted a diligent search and returned all classified material to the government, which was disproved after the FBI recovered some 33 boxes containing over 11,000 Government records and photos and over 100 records marked as classified.

Trump’s legal team waited until two weeks after the Aug. 8 FBI search before asking the court to appoint a special expert, an independent third party sometimes assigned in sensitive cases to review materials that might be covered by the privilege. attorney-client.