Former US president Donald Trump has won his bid for a third party to review documents seized in an FBI raid of his Florida home last month.
It's a legal win for Mr Trump, as it hits pause on the US Justice Department's use of the records while an outside legal expert – known as a special master – weeds out any which may fall under attorney-client or executive privilege.
What is a special master, and why has a judge allowed one?
A special master is an outside legal expert. In her ruling, US District Judge Aileen Cannon – an appointee of Mr Trump's – said the "unprecedented circumstances call for a brief pause to allow a neutral third party to ensure a just process".
The review will allow any personal documents to be filtered out and returned to Mr Trump.
In this case, this included medical documents and accounting information, the judge's order said.
The department had argued against it and the decision will almost certainly slow their investigation — a boost for Mr Trump.
A separate assessment by intelligence agencies of any risk from the apparent mishandling of classified records will continue under the judge's order.
Why are the documents a big deal?
On August 8, federal agents swooped on Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, seizing about 11,000 documents.
They were found stashed in the former president's bedroom, his closet — and bathroom.
Eighteen were marked top secret, 54 secret, and 31 confidential, according to court filings released in the weeks after.
The FBI also found dozens of empty folders marked classified, with no indication of what they had held.
There are rules about what former presidents can keep on leaving office – brought in after the Watergate scandal – which say such records are government property and must be preserved.
And it could violate other laws — including an Espionage Act statute which governs gathering, transmitting or losing national defence information, and others that cover mutilating or removing records as well as the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.
The department will also look at what it says were attempts to obstruct their investigation.
What has Mr Trump said?
A lawyer for Mr Trump has yet to respond to a request for comment on the latest development.
Mr Trump has previously called the investigation a witch-hunt and James Trusty, a lawyer for Mr Trump, compared the former president keeping classified documents to hanging on to an "overdue library book".
Mr Trump has also claimed to have worked with officials, prior to the raid.
Has anything like this happened before?
Mr Trump isn't the first to flout rules for safekeeping documents.
But the scale of this is something else, say national security experts.
Former assistant deputy director of national intelligence Richard Immerman says: “I cannot think of a historical precedent in which there was even the suspicion that a president or even a high-ranking officer in the administration, with the exception of the Nixon administration, purposely and consciously or even accidentally removed such a sizeable volume of papers."
And Mr Trump's former attorney-general Bill Barr, on the unprecedented raid of Mr Trump's resort, said: "It’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club."
So have document dramas happened before? Yes, there's been a few.
A secretary in Ronald Reagan's administration, Fawn Hall, testified that she altered and helped shred documents related to the Iran-Contra affair to protect Oliver North, her boss at the White House National Security Council.
Barack Obama's CIA director David Petraeus was forced to resign and pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanour for sharing classified material with a biographer he was having an affair with.
And Hillary Clinton, while Mr Obama's secretary of state, was scrutinised by the FBI – and excoriated by Mr Trump – for using a private email service when she was secretary of state in 2016 (an investigation found no deliberate mishandling of classified information).
What happens next?
The judge's order temporarily stops the department from using any of the seized materials in its investigation until the special master finishes their work, or until “further court order”.
It's not clear if this will block the investigation long-term, or have any effect on its outcome.
The department and Mr Trump's lawyers have until Friday to submit their preferred candidates for special master.
ABC/AP
