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Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, granted the special master wide-ranging authority to review the more than 11,000 documents carted away from Mar-a-Lago by the F.B.I. on Aug. 8, some of which bore markings labeling them as highly classified. Her ruling permitted whoever is appointed to the job to evaluate the documents not only for those protected by attorney-client privilege, a relatively common measure, but also for those potentially shielded by executive privilege, which typically protects confidential internal executive branch deliberations.

After trying for months to get the documents back from Mr. Trump, the National Archives, the agency that safeguards presidential records, told his lawyers in a letter in May that both the Justice Department and the Biden White House did not believe the former president’s executive privilege claims had merit.

“The question in this case is not a close one,” the archives wrote.

At a hearing last week concerning the question, the Justice Department argued that allowing a special master to conduct an executive privilege review of the seized material would be “unprecedented” and legally baseless since the department itself is part of the current executive branch and Mr. Trump is no longer in office.

“There is no role for a special master to play in executive privilege,” Julie Edelstein, a lawyer for the department, said during the hearing.

But Judge Cannon clearly disagreed with the Justice Department, writing in the order that she was “not convinced” of the government’s categorical assertion that executive privilege did not apply in this context. She added that she thought the department’s position “arguably overstates the law” and that setting aside any documents that could be shielded by executive privilege as the legal issues in the case are sorted out made sense.

“Even if any assertion of executive privilege by plaintiff ultimately fails in this context, that possibility, even if likely, does not negate a former president’s ability to raise the privilege as an initial matter,” she wrote.