Former US president Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to get involved in his fight with the Justice Department over classified documents that were taken from his home in Florida as part of a criminal investigation into how he handled government records.
Trump filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking them to block a portion of a lower court’s ruling that prevented a special master from reviewing more than 100 classified documents seized by FBI agents from the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on August 8.
Trump requested a special master to serve as an impartial arbitrator.
On September 21, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reversed a decision by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who had temporarily barred the department from examining the seized classified documents until the special master had identified and withheld from investigators any that could be deemed privileged.
Noting the importance of limiting access to classified information, the 11th Circuit also denied Judge Raymond Dearie access to the documents with classified markings.
In Tuesday’s filing, Trump’s attorneys argued that Dearie should be able to “determine whether documents bearing classification markings are in fact classified, and regardless of classification, whether those records are personal records or presidential records.”
Trump’s attorneys added that the Justice Department “attempted to criminalize a document management dispute and now vehemently opposes a transparent process that provides much-needed oversight.”
The search of Mar-a-Lago was conducted as part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally retained White House documents when he left office in January 2021 following his failed re-election bid in 2020 and whether Trump attempted to obstruct the investigation.
The investigation aims to determine who accessed classified materials, whether they were compromised, and whether any are still missing.
At issue in the 11th Circuit’s decision were documents marked as confidential, secret, or top secret.
Cannon, who was presiding over Trump’s lawsuit seeking to restrict Justice Department access to the seized documents, prohibited the review of all the materials and appointed Dearie to review the documents, thereby impeding the investigation.
