The Justice Department formally appealed the appointment of the special master overseeing the review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, in a brief filed with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday.
The Justice Department focused its interview on sweeping criticism of lower court Judge Eileen Cannon’s actions, arguing she had no authority to interfere in their federal criminal investigation. The Justice Department is asking the federal appeals court to vacate Cannon’s order and end the special master’s review of the documents.
“District courts have no general equitable authority to oversee federal criminal investigations,” the brief said. “[I]Instead, challenges to the government’s use of evidence recovered in an investigation are resolved through the standard practice of criminal motions, if and when charges are filed. Here, however, the district court granted the emergency relief sought by the Plaintiff…”.
The Justice Department also argued that Trump had no basis to interfere with the Justice Department’s review of executive branch documents, which is part of the executive branch.
Additionally, attorneys for the department pointed out that Trump never asserted any attorney-client privilege over the 11,000 documents obtained from Mar-a-Lago in August that would have justified the appointment of a special master. The Justice Department argued that the filter procedures it already used were sufficient to protect any sensitive documents from scrutiny by investigators.
“[Trump] has no reasonable claim to such privilege with respect to classified records or other government documents related to his official duties,” the Justice Department briefing said.
The Justice Department said all the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago could be evidence of crimes.
The department argued that investigators need access to the classified documents as they look into the potential crime of unauthorized retention of national defense information and also to be able to assess the potential risk to national security if they are disclosed. The department said investigators need access to the unclassified documents because they could prove government records were withheld or removed illegally.
A federal appeals court granted the department’s request last month to block certain aspects of an order from Cannon. That appeal challenges the entire order from Cannon, who granted Trump’s request to appoint a third party to review the documents seized from his Florida estate.
The special master – Raymond Dearie, a senior federal judge based in Brooklyn – has already begun proceedings for the review. If the department ultimately succeeds in its appeal, the special master could be ordered to stop the review process.
This appeal process, however, will take at least several weeks. While a federal judge did grant the department’s request to expedite the appeal, Trump’s legal team still has until Nov. 10 to file a response, and the 11th Circuit won’t schedule oral arguments until after the department files a follow-up response on the 17th. November.
As it stands now, the special master’s review must be completed by Dec. 16, a timeline set in motion by Cannon, a Trump appointee.
After the 11th Circuit intervened last month to allow the Justice Department access to about 100 of the documents marked classified, Trump filed an emergency request asking the Supreme Court to intervene in that dispute. On Thursday, the high court rejected his request.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene means that, for now, the classified documents will remain away from the special master.
The department, in its filing with the Supreme Court, had argued that the US 11th Circuit found that Cannon “abused her discretion” and caused a “serious and unwarranted invasion of the Executive Branch’s authority to control the use and distribution of highly sensitive state records”.
The DOJ says the seized documents obtained from Mar-a-Lago during the FBI investigation total 21,792 pages. The collection does not include materials seized by the FBI that have already been filtered for privacy and the 100 documents marked classified found in the search.
There has been a long-running pursuit by the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, to recover all federally owned records created during the Trump administration.
NARA’s exchange with Trump and his associates led earlier this year to the return of boxes and folders full of files from former administration officials and lawyers. NARA’s findings in one of those collections led to a Justice Department investigation into the mishandling of classified records and the August investigation at Mar-a-Lago. NARA said some presidential records from the Trump administration remain outstanding, citing reports that some White House staff used unofficial electronic systems to conduct official business.
The Justice Department’s call for a special master comes days after CNN reported that a Trump employee told the FBI that he was instructed by the former president to move boxes from a basement storage unit to his Mar-a-Lago residence – after Trump. The legal team obtained a subpoena for any classified documents at the Florida estate.
The Trump staffer initially denied handling sensitive documents or boxes at Mar-a-Lago, according to the source. But the FBI developed evidence that prompted investigators to go back to the witness, who revised their story to say that Trump had directed the boxes to be moved, the source said.
A witness account of Trump’s actions after the subpoena was served in May combined with the video could be key to the federal criminal investigation looking into a range of possible crimes, including obstruction, destruction of government records and mishandling of classified information .
The Justice Department had previously alleged that classified documents at the resort were “likely hidden and removed” from a warehouse at Mar-a-Lago as part of an effort to “obstruct” the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s possible mishandling of classified material.
This is a spastic story and will be updated.
