Judge orders independent expert to review documents seized from Trump

This undated image released by the US Department of Justice shows a photo attached as evidence to a Florida court filing of documents allegedly seized at Mar-a-Lago spread out on a carpet.

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1 min

A victory for the Trump camp in the case of the search of the residence of the former American president in Florida.

A federal judge decides to appoint a special supervisor to analyze the documents seized by the FBI. 

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With our correspondent in Washington,

Beyond the communication and the outrageous rhetoric, this was the only legal reaction of the Trump clan after the search of Mar-A-Lago: to ask for the appointment of an external authority to know what falls under the investigation or not.

Judge Aileen Cannon therefore decides to grant the request of the lawyers of the one who appointed her when he was president.

She considers that some of the documents may fall under executive privilege or attorney-client confidentiality.

There are, for example, in the documents seized, tax returns from Donald Trump, which are of interest to investigators in other cases.

On the other hand, she does not consider that the Trump legal team has proven that his client's constitutional rights were violated, which weakens the charges of politically motivated prosecution.

The special supervisor will therefore review the 11,000 documents seized to find out if they are relevant to the Justice Department's investigation.

Still have to find it.

In principle, both sides should try to agree on a name, which seems rather unlikely.

It will then be up to the judge to decide, except that the person named must have a fairly high level of security clearance to deal with confidential or even top secret documents.

All of this should considerably slow down the investigation, which is probably the goal sought by Donald Trump's lawyers.

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• donald trump