Donald Trump petitions US Supreme Court to intervene in seizure of sensitive documents

• Trump petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in his dispute with the Justice Department.
• Classified materials were among 11,000 documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago residence.
• The panel noted that confidential materials belong to the U.S. government and that Trump had no “individual interest” in them.

Tuesday, former President Donald Trump petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in his dispute with the Justice Department over classified materials confiscated from his Florida residence as part of a criminal investigation into his management of government records.

Trump filed an emergency petition asking the Supreme Court to block a portion of a lower court’s ruling that prevented an independent arbiter requested by Trump, known as a special master, from reviewing more than 100 classified documents that were among 11,000 documents seized by the FBI agents on August 8 from the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

On September 21, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reversed a decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. They had temporarily barred the department from examining the seized classified documents until the special master had identified and withheld any that could be deemed privileged from investigators.

Noting the significance of limiting access to sensitive 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 “judge whether papers bearing classification marks are in fact classified, and regardless of classification, whether those records are personal records or presidential records.”

Trump’s attorneys stated that the Justice Department “attempted to criminalize a document management dispute and now vehemently objects to a transparent process that provides much-needed oversight.”

The court-ordered search at Mar-a-Lago was performed as part of a federal investigation into whether Trump improperly held White House papers after he left office in January 2021 following his unsuccessful re-election quest in 2020 and whether Trump attempted to hinder the investigation.

The investigation aims to identify who accessed sensitive files, whether they were corrupted, and whether any are still missing. At issue in the 11th Circuit’s decision were papers marked as confidential, secret, or top secret.

Cannon, who was presiding over Trump’s lawsuit trying to restrict Justice Department access to the seized data, prohibited the study of all the materials and appointed Dearie to evaluate the documents, thereby hindering the probe.

On September 15, Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, rejected the Justice Department’s request that she partially lift her order on the classified materials because it hindered the government’s efforts to mitigate potential national security risks associated with their possible unauthorized disclosure.

The three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit featured two judges selected by President Trump and one judge appointed by previous President Barack Obama.

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Noting that confidential materials belong to the U.S. government, the 11th Circuit expressed skepticism that Trump had any “individual interest” in them and that he “has not even sought to demonstrate a need to know the information contained in the classified documents.”

The 11th Circuit also rejected the former president’s assertion that Trump declassified the records, stating that there was “no evidence” of such action and that the argument was a “red herring” because declassifying an official document would not alter its content or make it personal.

In a filing submitted on Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys stated that he has “broad authority governing classification of, and access to, classified documents.” Trump declared without evidence in a Fox News interview last month that he declassified the records and claimed he could do so “even by thinking about it.”

The three statutes underlying the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search warrant make it illegal to mishandle federal records regardless of their classification level.

Dearie was tasked by Cannon with reviewing all seized files, including secret ones, to identify anything susceptible to the attorney-client privilege or executive privilege – legal doctrines that insulate certain White House communications from disclosure.

The document probe is one of Trump’s many legal problems as he considers running for president again in 2024. The attorney general of New York state filed a lawsuit against Trump and three of his adult children last month, accusing them of fraud and deceit in producing financial statements for the family real estate company. On October 24, the Trump Organization is also scheduled to stand trial on state-level tax fraud accusations.

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