A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a significant win to the Justice Department in its investigation of highly sensitive documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, issuing a partial stay on a lower court’s ruling that froze key aspects of the case.
The three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously stayed the portion of a much-criticized prior ruling by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, that had prevented the government from scrutinizing the material gathered at Trump’s Florida residence and country club pending review from an independent special master.
“We decide only the narrow question presented: whether the United States has established that it is entitled to a stay of the district court’s order, to the extent that it (1) requires the government to submit for the special master's review the documents with classification markings and (2) enjoins the United States from using that subset of documents in a criminal investigation. We conclude that it has.”
The ruling was a rebuke to the claims made by Trump’s legal team about the former president’s supposed right to hold on to classified documents, some of which had confidential, secret and top secret markings.
“[Trump] has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the panel ruled. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents.”
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