- Trump’s lawyers have claimed attorney-client or executive privilege over documents seized by FBI.
- A judge agreed to appoint a special master who can review documents to check for privileged info.
- The special master said there has been insufficient evidence of privileged information so far.
A judge who was appointed special master to review thousands of White House documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August challenged the former president’s legal claim of privilege over certain records on Tuesday, according to The New York Times.
Trump and his lawyers have claimed that the documents are protected by either attorney-client or executive privilege, therefore, blocking the Justice Department’s access to certain documents for its criminal probe into Trump’s handling of sensitive government records.
But so far, Judge Raymond R. Dearie, the special master, said in a hearing that the batch of documents he reviewed lacked enough evidence to support the privilege claim, The Times reported.
“It’s a little perplexing as I go through the log,” Dearie said, according to The Times. “What’s the expression: ‘Where’s the beef?’ I need some beef.”
Dearie’s doubts revolved around a small batch of records that the DOJ already set aside from the larger trove of records that were seized from Trump’s resort, according to The Times
In one case, Dearie challenged how Trump's lawyers could claim that a document was Trump's personal property while also claiming that it's protected by executive privilege, which is only reserved for government records.
"Unless I'm wrong, and I've been wrong before, there's certainly an incongruity there," Dearie said in the hearing.
The concern from Dearie is the latest roadblock in the documents scandal for Trump, who has hoped to undermine the DOJ's investigation and downplay the severity of taking classified records, some of which may have pertained to national security intelligence.
In September, Dearie requested evidence that proved FBI agents planted documents in Mar-a-Lago or that the former president declassified records with highly sensitive information, as Trump claimed. Judge Aileen M. Cannon later overruled Drearie's request for the information.
Trump's lawyers also raised issues with finding a vendor to digitize thousands of documents so that they can be reviewed by Dearie. They argued in a court filing that they can't find a vendor willing to do the job and that the deadlines for handing over the documents were too rigid.
Judge Cannon extended the deadline to complete the special master review by December 16.
