The Justice Department is calling on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the use of a special master to oversee documents seized by the FBI in the Aug. 8 raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
The government holds that it was legally unsound for a lower court judge to fulfill Trump’s request for a special master to oversee documents seized by the FBI, along with her order blocking investigators from using the documents while the review plays out.
The special master, U.S. District Senior Judge Raymond Dearie, has been tasked with making recommendations about whether any of the nearly 11,000 seized documents should be off-limits to investigators because they’re privileged or personal.
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“Further, because Plaintiff did not demonstrate that the standard filter-team process is inadequate to protect his privileged attorney-client communications in the remaining materials, special-master review is unwarranted on that score as well,” the DOJ wrote in its filing on Friday.
The federal appeals court granted the DOJ’s request last month to block certain aspects of an order from Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee. The new appeal argues that Cannon’s entire order, which granted a third-party arbiter to review documents, should be voided.
If the agency is successful in its appeal, Dearie’s review could be halted prematurely.
The process for this appeal could last several weeks, as a federal judge declined the DOJ’s request to expedite the appeal and Trump’s legal team has been given until Nov. 10 to file a response. Additionally, the 11th Circuit will not schedule oral arguments until after the department files a subsequent reply on Nov. 17.
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So long as Dearie’s review is allowed to continue, he has been given until Dec. 16 to complete the review of thousands of records, a timeline established by Cannon.
Once the 11th Circuit ruled last month to allow the DOJ access to around 100 documents marked as classified, Trump filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to intervene. The high court ultimately shot down that request on Thursday without a noted response or dissent.
