More than a week after they searched former President Donald Trump's Florida residence, FBI agents are still sifting through the seized documents, two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter told NBC News.
The FBI's filter team, a group of agents that are not involved in the investigation, is tasked with separating documents that are covered by attorney-client privilege and material that is not relevant to the investigation.
Records that are relevant are handed over to the investigating agents, while those that are not relevant are returned to Trump. The filter team that Trump claimed agents stole during the search, were considered not relevant and returned to him, as previously reported by NBC News.
The filter team is checking to see if any of the documents or other materials that are not marked as classified include classified information, according to the officials.
The long period of review highlights the large amount of documents that were seized from Mar-a-Lago on August 8, when FBI agents removed 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were labeled secret and top secret.
The case is being run out of the Washington field office of the FBI, and former agency officials say counterintelligence agents are likely to be involved.
Trump said Sunday that the FBI took boxes of privileged attorney-client material, as well as executive privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken, in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. A group of news organizations, including NBC News, filed court papers asking him to publicly release the document after a group of news organizations, including Bruce Reinhart, set a hearing Thursday on whether to un-seal the affidavit federal investigators used to justify their search warrant. The Justice Department has filed a motion against the un-sealing of the affidavit, arguing it would compromise an ongoing investigation, while Trump's attorneys have yet to file a motion taking a position.