Trump Goes To Supreme Court Over Mar-a-Lago Classified Documents

Former President Donald Trump approached the Supreme Court on Tuesday. He wants the court to intervene in the dispute over materials that are marked as classified that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized from his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida in August.

The FBI said that during its search, it seized around 11,000 documents. It included about 100 with classification markings, reported the AP News. And now Trump has asked the Supreme Court to partially reverse an appellate court decision that prevented the special master from examining 100 documents with classification markings, according to The Guardian.

This emergency request is the latest example of Trump seeking to involve the justices in investigations that entangle him. It comes at a time when the high court’s legitimacy in politically explosive cases is under scrutiny. If Trump’s request is granted, it could bolster his attempt to challenge the search in court, according to CNN. He had argued that he may have had a right, as a former President, to possess certain government documents. It included documents potentially containing America's most sensitive secrets.

But Trump is not asking the Supreme Court to block the Department of Justice (DOJ) from using the documents in its criminal investigation into how documents from his White House were mishandled. Justice Clarence Thomas, who is the recipient of Trump’s application, gave the DOJ a deadline of 5 p.m, Oct. 11 to respond. It is unclear whether allowing the special master to also access classified documents poses a real threat to the criminal probe.

It is also not clear how sympathetic the high court will be to Trump’s claims. They rest mostly on technical arguments about whether an appeals court had the authority to carve out the 100 documents from the review.

Trump’s latest application to the Supreme Court comes after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the DOJ. It said that the department’s criminal investigation into the documents that are marked as classified could continue. The investigation's use of the records had been put on hold by a district judge in Florida. The judge had granted Trump a request for a third-party review of the materials obtained by the FBI in the Mar-a-Lago search. Now, the appeals court is considering whether to do away with the rest of the special master order.