The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the Justice Department’s use of “filter teams” to determine if documents seized in an investigation are shielded from government scrutiny.
The case – Korf v United States – could have significantly impacted the legal battle over government documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s residence at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in August refused to block the Justice Department’s use of filter teams, ruling that federal courts across the country have endorsed the practice.
The issue, according to Scotusblog is whether the attorney-client privilege and work-product protection established in United States v. Zolin prevent a court from allowing a “filter team” of Department of Justice attorneys to review assertedly privileged materials of petitioners’ lawyers, seized during a search before any court ruled on petitioners’ assertions of attorney-client privilege and work-product protection and without requiring any showing that an exception to privilege may apply.
The DOJ uses so-called “filter teams,” – teams of federal prosecutors and agents not assigned to a given case – to review seized documents claimed to be privileged before the privilege question has been resolved, reports The Hill.
In the search of Trump’s residence in Florida, the filter team reported that 520 documents out of 200,000 pages found at Mar-a-Lago were flagged. Government lawyers concluded that most of those 520 pages they initially flagged as potential attorney-client communications or other legal work did not appear to be covered by those privileges, according to an Aug. 30 report unsealed by a judge Monday.
More than 300 pages were identified as “legal in nature” — including settlements, nondisclosure agreements, and retainers — or otherwise “sensitive” and should be returned to Trump, the government said.
Trump’s defense for how and why the documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago has shifted, but one of his claims stymying DOJ review of the materials is that the documents contain privileged information, reports Bloomberg.
In the meantime, US District Judge Raymond Dearie has been appointed as a: “special master” to oversee the documents flagged by the filter team: and now, He and Trump’s legal team and Justice Department lawyers are in the process of trying to agree on the characterization of the documents.
