Donald Trump’s legal team dropped privilege claims for several documents that are part of the trove of material taken by the FBI from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to a court filing Monday.
The nine documents encompass records that appear connected to correspondence with the National Archives as well as a document titled “The President’s Calls,” Bloomberg reported.
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“The parties agree that these materials can be provided immediately to the government’s Case Team so that issues concerning executive privilege and the Presidential Records Act can be resolved,” the court filing said.
Trump’s legal team is embroiled in a legal battle with the Department of Justice concerning privilege claims governing the documents seized by the FBI during the Aug. 8 search and seizure at his lavish Mar-a-Lago resort. Last month, Trump won the approval of a court-appointed special master to seek out documents that could be covered by privilege claims and therefore removed from the criminal investigation. The DOJ is investigating potential violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice, per court documents.
Judge Raymond Dearie was picked to be special master, but the DOJ is currently appealing the appointment of a special master in court. He has until Dec. 16 to make critical decisions about the documents in question.
Last week, Dearie vented frustration at Trump’s legal team for being scant with details about privilege claims in its logs during a conference call that also featured DOJ officials. Trump’s team is combing through roughly 21,700 pages of material to identify potential privilege claims. An in-house “Privilege Review Team” for the DOJ has already flagged about 520 pages’ worth of documents from the Mar-a-Lago stash, per Bloomberg.
In total, government officials retrieved about 200,000 pages worth of documents, which encompassed about 100 documents with classified documents, according to court documents. Some of the material marked classified bore labels ranging from “CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET information,” per court records.
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FBI officials conducted the August raid after determining that sensitive documentation may have been left at Trump’s Palm Beach resort despite multiple attempts to retrieve all outstanding material that the government says should be returned. The Mar-a-Lago raid followed prior trips by government officials to Mar-a-Lago, including in January and June, in efforts to retrieve the documents.
Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, decrying the raid as an “unAmerican break-in” and “witch hunt” while maintaining that he declassified the material in question. He has also contended that a president can declassify material “even by thinking about it.”
