Washington — The Justice Department moved to stay a portion of a Florida federal decide’s order banning the federal government from utilizing a few of the documents it seized from former President Donald Trump’s residence whereas an impartial third get together evaluations the documents.
On Friday, the division filed a movement asking the eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to partially stay U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order, arguing that the U.S. District Court lacks the authority to ban the FBI from reviewing 103 documents bearing labeled markings it seized from Mar-a-Lago in August.
“The district court erred by exercising jurisdiction as to records bearing classification markings,” the Justice Department mentioned in its submitting Friday night time.
Further, the Justice Department wrote, “The records bearing classification markings are not subject to any plausible claim of privilege that would prevent the government from reviewing and using them.” Its argument is, in essence, that data which might be marked labeled couldn’t be topic to private privilege claims by Trump.
“No factual or legal disputes justify the district court’s order as to the records bearing classification markings,” the Justice Department mentioned, and it repeated the argument that with no partial stay that may allow it to proceed its investigation, “the government and the public will be irreparably harmed.”
The division filed discover final Thursday that it could enchantment the ruling.
Cannon, appointed to the bench by Trump, dominated earlier this month that the federal investigators probing whether or not Trump mishandled labeled documents had been to cease utilizing the seized documents in their felony probe, pending the evaluation of an impartial third get together, a particular grasp. On Thursday, Cannon appointed U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie to be the impartial arbiter who will evaluation the data, filtering out private gadgets and documents and materials which may be topic to claims of attorney-client or govt privileges.
In its 152-page submitting, the division didn’t contest the naming of a particular grasp, however as an alternative restricted its arguments to the federal government’s proper to proceed its investigation into whether or not the previous president mishandled the nation’s most delicate information. It additionally argued that it shouldn’t be obliged to flip labeled documents over to the particular grasp.
“Although the government believes the district court fundamentally erred in appointing a special master and granting injunctive relief, the government seeks to stay only the portions of the order causing the most serious and immediate harm to the government and the public by (1) restricting the government’s review and use of records bearing classification markings and (2) requiring the government to disclose those records for a special-master review process,.” the Justice Department mentioned.
Cannon declined Thursday to grant the federal government’s request that she partially raise her personal ruling in order that investigators might proceed reviewing the 103 documents with labeled markings, writing, “The court does not find it appropriate to accept the government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion.”
The documents marked labeled have already been separated from the remaining hundreds of seized data, however the intelligence neighborhood paused its evaluation of the documents due to “uncertainty” brought on by Cannon’s order barring Justice Department investigators from scrutinizing them till the particular grasp, U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, completes his evaluation.
Prosecutors have argued that Dearie’s evaluation shouldn’t apply to the data with labeled markings as a result of such documents explicitly belonged to the federal government, and never to Trump.
Investigators are inspecting allegations that documents with labeled markings had been mishandled after they had been transferred from the White House to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence after the presidential transition in 2021. In three separate situations earlier this 12 months main up to the August 8 search, the National Archives and the FBI recovered thousands of documents from the Florida resort. They are additionally probing whether or not Trump or his crew obstructed the investigation by not correctly responding to a grand jury subpoena, which prosecutors reiterated in their movement on Thursday.
Trump’s request for a particular grasp got here two weeks after the FBI took 33 gadgets from a storage room on the property and the previous president’s workplace. More than 100 documents with labeled markings had been discovered in 13 containers or containers, whereas three documents with “confidential” and “secret” classification markings had been taken from desks in Trump’s workplace at Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department revealed in previous filings.
Cannon famous in her ruling Thursday that the FBI’s filter crew had discovered medical and tax documents in the seized data and revealed that in two situations, probably privileged information made its manner by way of the filter and into the arms of investigators. The Justice Department has since requested the court docket to unseal a report ready by the filter crew.
Andres Triay, Robert Legare and Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.