Supporters of former President Donald Trump gather near his residence at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on August 9, 2022.
Giorgio Viera/Getty Images
A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted the Justice Department’s request to resume a review of classified materials seized from Mar-a-Lago during a search last month of former President Donald Trump’s home.
The ruling, from a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, overturned a Trump-appointed judge’s decision that blocked the Justice Department from reviewing those records as part of a criminal inquiry into the former president’s handling of government records.
In a 29-page ruling, the 11th Circuit delivered a forceful rebuke of Trump’s suggestion that he had declassified the materials at issue and rejected the possibility that the former president could have an “individual interest in or need for” the more than 100 records marked as classified. The decision appeared to fully embrace the Justice Department’s arguments that a further delay in the review of the highly sensitive records would compromise national security and cause “irreparable harm” to the government and public.
“It is self-evident that the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the storage of the classified records did not result in ‘exceptionally grave damage to the national security,'” the 11th Circuit judges wrote.
“Ascertaining that,” they added, “necessarily involves reviewing the documents, determining who had access to them and when, and deciding which (if any) sources or methods are compromised.”
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