The judge who granted former President Donald Trump‘s request for a third party to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into classified records found at Mar-a-Lago has dismissed his lawsuit, marking an end to a monthslong saga since the FBI’s August search at the Florida estate.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of the former president, affirmed an appeals court’s decision on Monday that she lacked jurisdiction to appoint a special master to oversee documents taken from his estate and lifted an injunction that blocked investigators from using them in a criminal investigation in the meantime.
By dismissing the lawsuit, titled Trump v. United States, all scheduled hearings over the dispute in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida are canceled, and all pending motions are “denied as moot,” according to a court order.
TRUMP LOSES MAJOR LEGAL FIGHT IN DOCUMENTS CASE AFTER COURT HALTS SPECIAL MASTER REVIEW
Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that Cannon never had the jurisdiction to assign U.S. District Senior Judge Raymond Dearie, a semiretired jurist based in Brooklyn, to serve the role of the special master.
“We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant,” Judge William Pryor, an appointee of George W. Bush, wrote for a unanimous panel ruling. “Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
Dearie had expected to complete his review by Friday. The 11th Circuit’s decision came less than two weeks after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to oversee the investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the unauthorized transfer of about 100 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after he left the Oval Office.
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Trump’s counsel had argued for months that a select number of government records were personal under the federal Presidential Records Act or that certain materials were covered under executive privilege. The former president has also argued the DOJ secured an overbroad warrant and that the investigation into him was politically motivated.
Trump had until Thursday to ask the full 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court to intervene and pause the panel’s decision.
