(NewsGlobal.com)- The FBI team that raided the former president’s home in Mar-a-Lago improperly saw privileged communications between Trump and his lawyer, violating attorney-client confidentiality, according to The Epoch Times. This marks the third time that the federal agency violated this privilege, Trump’s lawyers allege in a new filing.
The process set up to prevent something like this from happening has already failed twice, which the agency acknowledges, but it was Sept. 26 when officials informed Trump’s lawyers that of a third failure, according to a new filing by the former president’s lawyers.
The FBI review team stationed with reviewing potentially privileged material characterized the email under question as non-privileged, which Trump’s team disputes.
“Plaintiff believes the email falls squarely into the category of attorney-client privileged,” Trump lawyers told U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, a Reagan appointee who is serving as a special master in the case.
Benjamin Hawk, the Department of Justice (DOJ) official in charge of the review process, claimed in court that the first two failures of the FBI were an example of the review process working, which U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who inserted Dearie into the case, doubted.
The two failures of the FBI “indicate that, on more than one occasion, the Privilege Review Team’s initial screening failed to identify potentially privileged material,” she said.
The agents who viewed the materials may still be working on the case, according to the outlet. The Trump team wrote in the filing that they want all of the names of the the officials that were exposed to the materials.
“The unilaterally imposed filter team, which made no effort to contact Plaintiff’s counsel throughout its review process, has admitted to three breaches so far,” the lawyers said. “All this before review by the Special Master and the Plaintiff. By way of this filing, Plaintiff is asking the Special Master to order disclosure of the names of each attorney and Special Agent who was exposed to materials eventually provided to the Privilege Review Team.”
