Lawyers for former President Donald Trump called upon the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling that reversed a lower court ruling allowing for a special master to review allegedly classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.
Last month, an appeals court panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit granted the Justice Department’s request for a partial stay of a lower court order, allowing the DOJ to continue its criminal investigation using roughly 100 allegedly classified documents the FBI seized from Trump’s Florida resort home. Trump wants the Supreme Court to intervene.
“The Eleventh Circuit lacked jurisdiction to review, much less stay, an interlocutory order of the District Court providing for the Special Master to review materials seized from President Trump’s home, including approximately 103 documents the Government contends bear classification markings,” Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court on Tuesday. “This application seeks to vacate only that portion of the Eleventh Circuit’s Stay Order limiting the scope of the Special Master’s review of the documents bearing classification markings.”
The three-judge panel’s decision last month was a win for the DOJ, with the appeals court reversing Judge Aileen Cannon’s determination that the DOJ would have to provide seized documents with classified markings to special master Judge Raymond Dearie for independent review.
“The unprecedented circumstances presented by this case — an investigation of the Forty-Fifth President of the United States by the administration of his political rival and successor — compelled the District Court to acknowledge the significant need for enhanced vigilance and to order the appointment of a Special Master to ensure fairness, transparency, and maintenance of the public trust,” Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court on Tuesday, saying the appeals court didn’t have the proper authority to rule as it did.
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Trump’s lawyers added, “This unwarranted stay should be vacated as it impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the Special Master. Moreover, any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a President’s home erodes public confidence in our system of justice.”
Cannon, a district court judge in Florida who appointed Dearie as special master last month, ruled that she “temporarily enjoins the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.”
She also contended her ruling “shall not impede” the classification review and intelligence assessment being conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence related to the records seized in the unprecedented August raid.
Despite Cannon’s insistence, an ODNI official told the Washington Examiner last month that it had “paused” the classification review following consultation with federal prosecutors. It resumed its assessment following the appeals court ruling.
The DOJ, which quickly appealed the order to the 11th Circuit last month, had claimed that pausing the FBI’s criminal investigation while separately continuing the ODNI’s damage assessment was essentially impossible.
“The Intelligence Community’s review and assessment cannot be readily segregated from the Department of Justice’s and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s activities in connection with the ongoing criminal investigation, and uncertainty regarding the bounds of the Court’s order and its implications for the activities of the FBI has caused the Intelligence Community, in consultation with DOJ, to pause temporarily this critically important work,” the DOJ argued last month. “Moreover, the government and the public are irreparably injured when a criminal investigation of matters involving risks to national security is enjoined.”
The circuit judges who unanimously sided with the DOJ, Obama appointee Robin Rosenbaum and Trump appointees Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher, agreed with the DOJ that Cannon had “likely erred” in her ruling pausing the DOJ’s criminal investigation and required prosecutors to allow Dearie to scrutinize the 100 documents with classified markings independently.
“We decide only the narrow question presented: whether the United States has established that it is entitled to a stay of the district court’s order, to the extent that it (1) requires the government to submit for the special master’s review the documents with classification markings and (2) enjoins the United States from using that subset of documents in a criminal investigation,” the appeals court said last month. “We conclude that it has.”
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Trump’s team argued Tuesday that “the Eleventh Circuit’s Stay Order should be vacated in part” and said that “under the extraordinary circumstances presented here, the District Court did not abuse its discretion in appointing a Special Master to review the materials seized from President Trump’s residence.”
Dearie, the special master, had cast doubt on the former president’s declassification claims during a court hearing last month.
