Donald Trump has won a lawsuit over government files seized from his Florida home.

A federal judge in Florida ruled Monday that she allowed the former president's request for a special assessor to be appointed to review the material.

Trump had both invoked executive privilege and claimed that some of the documents were covered by attorney-client privilege.

Majid Sattar

Political correspondent for North America based in Washington.

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The Justice Department in Washington must now hand over the documents, including numerous classified documents.

It had already started examining the files and, according to its own statements, stored documents that might fall under attorney-client privilege separately.

However, it had argued that a previous president does not have executive privileges.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed during Trump's tenure, has now ruled that the special assessor should not only review the files for potential attorney-client privilege, but also for executive privilege.

The judge's decision slows the investigation

However, the judge stressed that her decision did not impede the damage assessment by the National Intelligence Director's authority.

Avril Haines, the National Intelligence Director, told Congress in late August that her officials would conduct a damage review.

It had to be investigated whether a national security risk had arisen as a result of the removal of classified information, some of which had the highest level of secrecy.

The Justice Department had made it public that some of the classified information stolen by Trump contained intelligence derived from "humint," i.e. information from hired agents, which may now be at risk.

In early August, the FBI searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago property as part of a criminal investigation, seizing boxes of files.

The judge's decision is now slowing down the investigation.

The review by a special assessor can potentially take months.

Trump can therefore no longer be accused of obstruction of justice or even violation of the espionage law before the congressional elections.

However, since it is convention in the Justice Department not to take any action that could be construed as political interference 60 days before an election, such an indictment was unlikely at this point in time anyway.