CNN
—
A federal appeals court has allowed the Justice Department to continue reviewing documents marked classified as seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and resort.
The emergency intervention overturned the trial judge’s order on the documents that obstructed federal investigators’ processing of the documents, and strongly condemned the Trump team’s attempt to suggest, without evidence, that the material was somehow declassified. Trump’s options for blocking the criminal investigation are now fading, and one of his only remaining possibilities is an emergency request to the Supreme Court.
The ruling was issued by a panel of three justices on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, two of whom were nominated by Trump.
A special master censored a subset of about 100 records, which would have allowed Trump’s legal team to see them, but has now partially stopped. Special master Judge Raymond Dearie was able to continue his work reviewing the remaining material seized from Mar-a-Lago to ensure records belonging to Trump or that he may claim to be classified are not used by any investigators.
The records — which prosecutors say contain highly sensitive national security information — are at the heart of a criminal investigation into the mishandling of federal records after Trump’s presidency. The focus on them was a major factor in prompting the Justice Department and the courts to authorize an unprecedented search of the former president’s home.
Hear what Hillary Clinton thinks the Justice Department should do with Trump
All told, the 29-page opinion greatly advances the Justice Department’s arguments throughout the Mar-a-Lago document controversy, while undercutting several of Trump’s claims about the material seized by the FBI.
“It goes without saying that the public has a keen interest in ensuring that the storage of classified records does not result in ‘particularly serious damage to national security,'” the three-judge panel said. “Asserting this necessarily involves reviewing the files, determining who has access to them and when, and deciding which (if any) sources or methods are compromised.”
The appeals court acknowledged that the biggest question Trump may face as the investigation continues is that even a former president should not have access to classified information without federal approval.
“In our case, we cannot discern why plaintiffs have a personal interest or need in any one of the hundred classified-marked documents,” the appeals court wrote, noting that classified records are controlled by the current government and should only be Shared on a need-to-know basis.
“This requirement applies equally to former presidents unless the current administration decides to waive it at its own discretion.”
Throughout the proceedings, Trump’s lawyers have raised vague questions about whether the material is truly classified. But they did not outright assert in court that the former president declassified them, even though Trump himself claimed outside court that he did.
On Wednesday night, an appeals court panel convened Trump’s legal team.
“Plaintiff suggested that he may have declassified the documents while he was president,” the court wrote. “But there is no evidence in the records that any of these records were declassified. Before the special master, the plaintiff refused to provide any evidence that he The files have been decrypted.”
Trump’s lawyers have also sought to delay any specific disclosure on whether the documents had been declassified when the special director initially reviewed the materials.
The appeals court broadly rejected U.S. District Judge Erin Cannon’s logic for ordering a special primary review and denying the Justice Department’s request to exempt classified documents from review.
The panel dissected Cannon’s arguments to justify her intervention, saying she offered an “undefensible” approach for the intelligence community to continue evaluating the documents while criminal investigations into them were suspended. The administration has “fully explained how and why its national security review is inseparable from its criminal investigation” — a claim Cannon dismissed.
Prosecutors told the 11th Circuit on Tuesday night: “These records are marked by classification indicating that they are government records, and the officials responsible have previously determined that their unauthorized disclosure would cause harm to national security — including ‘particularly serious harm’,” prosecutors told the 11th Circuit on Tuesday night. ‘.” Archive.
The Justice Department asked the 11th Circuit to intervene in the Mar-a-Lago documents dispute after Trump successfully sued to secure the appointment of a special guru, an independent attorney, to dump some 11,000 documents obtained by the FBI in a search.
Cannon previously rejected the Justice Department’s request that she suspend part of the order that applied to 100 documents determined to be classified.
The Justice Department argued that none of the three criminal statutes cited by the FBI in obtaining the Mar-a-Lago search warrant depended on the material being classified.
In an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday, Trump claimed he wasn’t sure what was in the box the FBI took. Trump further emphasized the classification of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago, reiterating theories that legal experts believe have little merit and are irrelevant to the case at hand.
The three-judge panel that issued the unanimous ruling on Thursday consisted of three judges, two of whom were appointed by Trump.
Justices Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher were appointed by Trump in 2018 and 2020, respectively, while Judge Robin Rosenbaum was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014.
Prior to serving on the 11th Circuit, Grant was confirmed to the Georgia Supreme Court by a 52-46 vote in the Senate and served as the state’s attorney general from 2015 to 2016.
Brasher served as a district court judge in the Central District of Alabama before being appointed by Trump and was confirmed by a 52-43 vote.
Rosenbaum was confirmed in the Senate by a 91-0 vote and served as a District Judge for the Southern District of Florida before being appointed to the 11th Circuit.
In seeking to reopen the criminal investigation into the documents, the Justice Department argued that Cannon’s order prevented investigators from taking steps to assess and mitigate national security risks posed by the way the documents were handled.
Cannon said the intelligence community is conducting a national security assessment of the material. However, the Justice Department has argued that the assessment cannot be decoupled from the criminal investigation.
The appeals judge found that suspending the investigation could harm the federal government and national security, and that Trump’s team did not have sufficient reason to review the potentially classified records.
The court also did not challenge the Justice Department, saying it could not separate intelligence reviews of documents from criminal investigations.
Watch New York AG Announce Lawsuit Against Trump
“Delaying (or preventing) a U.S. ban on the use of classified material in criminal investigations has the potential to cause real and significant harm to the United States and the public,” the court wrote.
“The court should only order the review of such material in the most exceptional circumstances. The record does not allow for a conclusion of this circumstance,” the ruling added.
The 11th Circuit strongly rejected Trump’s argument that he may have an interest in classified records, which could make them inaccessible to federal criminal investigators.
Trump “has no possessive interest in the documents at issue, so he would not be identifiably harmed if the United States reviewed documents that he neither owned nor had a personal interest in. Second, we think the plaintiff insists that he would be criminalized The harm of the investigation is unconvincing,” they wrote.
“Because of the nature and records of the classified material at issue here, we have no reason to expect that U.S. use of these records would result in the risk of disclosure of plaintiff’s privileged information to the United States,” they wrote.
This story has been updated with more details.