The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to reject Donald Trump’s request that it intervene in the dispute over classified documents seized from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August. Calling the records “extraordinarily sensitive,” the DOJ said the Supreme Court should let stand a federal appeals court order that blocked the special master’s access over those records while legal challenges play out, CNN reports.
“As this Court has emphasized, courts should be cautious before ‘insisting upon an examination’ of records whose disclosure would jeopardize national security ‘even by the judge alone, in chambers,’” DOJ wrote, CNN reported citing filed documents.
The Justice Department’s primary argument is that the appeals court was correct, and they said the Trump legal team was wrong to argue the Supreme Court should consider the issue.
At issue are two orders issued by Trump-appointee US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who authorized a special master to review seized materials – including those with classified markings. Earlier, Cannon temporarily blocked the Justice Department from using the subset of documents as a part of its ongoing criminal probe, giving Trump a runway to sharpen his defenses.
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However, a panel of judges on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, acting upon a request from the Justice Department, agreed to freeze portions of those orders while the legal dispute plays out.
The DOJ, in its filing, also noted that the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals found that Cannon “abused her discretion” and inflicted “a serious and unwarranted intrusion on the Executive Branch’s authority to control the use and distribution of extraordinarily sensitive government records.”
The full court could act on the matter within days. It would take five justices to agree to grant Trump’s request.
Read the entire report on CNN.
