A federal judge in Florida has agreed to appoint a special master who will be reviewing the documents found during the FBI raid on former United States president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. It also instructed the Justice Department to temporarily halt its investigation.
The ruling by US district judge Aileen Cannon came as a relief to Trump and his lawyers who have been criticising the authorities for their handling of the situation. In the ruling, the judge said that the documents “could be subject to attorney-client privilege and executive privilege”.
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“In addition to being deprived of potentially significant personal documents, which alone creates a real harm, plaintiff faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public,” the judge wrote in her judgement, according to Reuters.
Trump and the Justice Department can submit their proposed list of candidates till Friday.
The raid conducted on August 8 was sanctioned after the FBI spoke with a number of witnesses who confirmed that the Florida residence can contain documents which were highly sensitive in nature and could even prove “obstruction of justice”, according to an affidavit released by the DOJ.
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The affidavit also claimed that there were around 700 documents found at the Mar-a-Lago residence and after further classification, they were determined to be extremely sensitive in nature.
Trump, however, has accused both the FBI and the DOJ of targeting him deliberately ahead of the midterm elections and denied any wrongdoings regarding the documents found in Florida.
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