During a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate in August, classified documents were seized. On Tuesday, the Joe Biden administration urged the Supreme Court to steer clear of a legal fight over them.
The high court is currently weighing an emergency appeal from the former President. He asked it to overturn a lower court ruling. He wants it to permit a special master to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings. They were taken in the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.
The Department Of Justice (DOJ) argued in a filing that the Supreme Court should reject Trump's motion. They want the documents to be kept out of the special master’s purview. They want this since Trump did not show that he was being irreparably harmed. They believe that his arguments about jurisdiction didn't have merit, reported The Guardian.
The DOJ wrote that Trump did not acknowledge the "court of appeals' conclusion that the district court’s order" was an "unwarranted intrusion on the Executive Branch’s authority to control the use and distribution of extraordinarily sensitive government records." And so, they urged that the "application should be denied.”
Last month, a three-judge committee from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit limited the special master’s review to the much larger share of non-classified documents, reported the AP News. The judges sided with the DOJ, but Trump’s legal team said in their application to the Supreme Court that it was essential for the special master to have access to the classified documents.
Last month, veteran Brooklyn judge Raymond Dearie was named to serve as a special master. He was given the task to segregate any documents seized from Mar-a-Lago that may be covered by claims of attorney-client privilege or executive privilege. Now the issue is a legal dispute over the scope of the authority given to Dearie, who was appointed by Judge Aileen Cannon. She empowered him to inspect the classified documents. She halted the DOJ's use of those records for its criminal investigation until the special master’s review was done.
But the appeals court set aside that part of the judge's longer ruling. It agreed with the DOJ’s arguments that there was no need for Dearie to review the classified records since they were not likely to involve issues of privilege that the Trump team appealed.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is appealing Cannon’s entire ruling to the 11th Circuit.
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