Former President Donald Trump.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to reject an appeals court ruling that granted the Justice Department access to a set of around 100 classified government documents seized from Mar-a-Lago over the summer.
It’s the latest salvo in Trump’s escalating legal battle with the Justice Department after the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Florida residence in August and recovered thousands of pages of government records, some of which were marked top-secret. The search came as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the former president’s handling of national security information.
On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers asked Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to issue an emergency order giving a court-appointed special master — an outside arbiter tasked with going through the seized records and sifting out those that may be privileged — authority over the 100 classified documents.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee confirmed to the federal bench in 2020, had barred the Justice Department from reviewing the seized materials as part of their investigation until the special master had gone through them for privileged materials.
But the department quickly appealed Cannon’s ruling to the 11th circuit, where a three-judge panel consisting of two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee reversed parts of Cannon’s ruling and said the feds could use the set of 100 classified records for investigative purposes.
“Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the appeals court ruling said.
Trump’s legal team said in its Supreme Court filing Tuesday that the circuit court’s ruling compromised “the integrity of the well-established policy against piecemeal appellate review” and ignored Cannon’s “broad discretion without justification.”
“This unwarranted stay should be vacated as it impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the Special Master,” the filing said.
This story is developing. Check back for updates.