WASHINGTON Former President Donald Trump requested the Supreme Court to get involved in the lawsuit regarding classified data he maintained at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in an emergency request that was submitted on Tuesday.
Although Trump’s legal team did not seek the judges to stop the Justice Department from utilizing the records as part of a criminal probe, they did urge the court to permit the special master to review secret materials that federal investigators had taken from Trump’s Florida estate.
The Justice Department could once again use classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago in its criminal investigation, and the special master was prohibited from reviewing them, according to a ruling made on September 21 by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was part of the request made by Trump’s attorneys.
Trump’s attorneys stated in the brief on Tuesday that the final sentence of the appeals court order “seriously affects the continuing, time-sensitive work of the special master.” Furthermore, any restrictions on the thorough and open evaluation of the evidence gathered during the exceptional raid on a president’s house undermine the public’s confidence in our legal system.
According to the former president’s attorneys, the three-judge panel’s last month unanimous decision undermined “the integrity of the well-established policy against piecemeal appellate review” and disregarded “the district courts broad discretion without explanation.”
Trump’s request must be addressed by the Justice Department by October 11 at 5 p.m., according to Justice Clarence Thomas, who oversees emergency applications from the 11th Circuit. The lower court’s decision is still in effect for the time being even though Thomas has the option of acting on the case himself. Instead, it is more likely that he will refer it to the entire court, which won’t act until it has received that response.
Trump would want the support of five justices in order to obtain his desired outcome. Trump hasn’t fared well in other such emergency applications, including his attempt to prevent White House documents from being handed over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and his bid to avoid disclosure of his financial records to prosecutors in New York, despite the court having a 6-3 conservative majority, including three justices he appointed.
In a filing on Tuesday, Trump’s legal team claimed that the district court’s order “providing for the Special Master to review materials seized from President Trump’s home, including approximately 103 documents the Government contends bear classification markings” was “not subject to review” by the 11th Circuit court because it “lacked jurisdiction to do so.”
The Justice Department appealed a decision made earlier in the month by Trump appointee U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that temporarily prohibited the department from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes. The appeals court issued its decision in response to that appeal.
To analyze all of the evidence taken from Mar-a-Lago on August 8, Cannon appointed Raymond J. Dearie, a senior U.S. court judge for the Eastern District of New York, as Special Master. Dearie was suggested by the Trump campaign, and Justice Department representatives indicated their support for him as a prospective arbitrator to decide which papers would be covered by presidential privilege or attorney-client privilege.
The Trump White House’s papers have still not all been turned over in accordance with the Presidential Records Act, the National Archives informed the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Friday.
A receipt of recovered goods revealed that the FBI discovered a wealth of top-secret and other highly classified documents several days after searching Donald Trump’s Florida property. Eleven sets of sensitive documents, some of which were marked as secret and top secret, were taken out by federal investigators.
