The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an emergency request from former President Donald Trump to intervene in the legal battle over classified documents seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate in August.
Trump’s attorneys asked the court to overturn a lower court ruling and permit a special master to review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search.
Last month, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which included two Trump appointees, limited the special master’s review to the much larger tranche of non-classified documents. The judges sided with the Justice Department, which had argued there was no legal basis for the special master to conduct his own review of the classified records.
Trump’s lawyers said in their application to the Supreme Court that it was essential for the special master to have access to the classified records to “determine whether documents bearing classification markings are in fact classified, and regardless of classification, whether those records are personal records or Presidential records.”
The Justice Department said in a Supreme Court filing that Trump’s request had no merit.
The FBI says it seized roughly 11,000 documents, including about 100 with classification markings, during its search. The Trump team asked a judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, to appoint a special master to do an independent review of the records.
Cannon subsequently assigned a veteran Brooklyn judge, Raymond Dearie, to review the records and segregate those that may be protected by claims of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege. The Justice Department objected to Dearie’s ability to review the classified records, prompting the 11th Circuit to side with the department.
Trump’s appeal was denied in a brief one-sentence order with no noted dissents. As president, Trump appointed three justices to the high court – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – shifting its ideological balance to a 6-3 conservative majority.
This is a developing story. Check back later for updates.
