On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from former President Donald Trump regarding the trove of government documents — some of which were marked as classified — that were retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago estate this summer.
The order means that a special master, tasked with examining thousands of government documents that were removed from Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, home, will be barred from examining documents that are marked as classified.
In August, the FBI executed a search warrantBased on Evidence that Trump had classified documents in his possessionFollowing Two attempts were made to retrieve the documents earlier in the year.. Two weeks after the search warrant was executed on his estate, Trump’s lawyers demanded that a special master review all of the records that were removed, including more than 100 classified documents, in order to determine whether any of Trump’s legal privileges had been violated.
Many legal professionals have been there. questioned whether the classified documents could be considered privilegedThese records belong to the U.S. government and not Trump, even though they were presidential records from Trump’s time in the White House. Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, a district court judge, agreed to appoint a special Master, naming Judge Raymond Dearie to that position.
Her order also includes the appointment of a special master, Cannon stated that the DOJ could not continue examining the documents marked as classified, claiming that the classified markings didn’t necessarily mean that Trump’s executive privilege didn’t apply. Cannon appealed this ruling, and in mid September, a three-judge panel of judges from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decided to reconsider it. They were my side, placing a stay on Cannon’s order and allowing investigators to examine the classified documents.
“For our part, we cannot discern why [Trump] would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings,” the ruling from the 11th Circuit Court panel of judges said.
Trump’s legal team The Supreme Court heard the appeal earlier this monthThe special master was asked to keep the ability of determining whether classified documents were privileged. This week, the Court issued a single sentence order in which it stated that it would not hear the appeal.
“The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented to Justice [Clarence] Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied,” the order said.
The reasoning behind the Court’s decision was not explained by any of the justices, and it is not known how many of them sided for Trump.
The Court’s refusal to entertain Trump’s appeal means that the DOJ can continue to examine the documents marked as classified, and that Dearie will be barred from including them in his examination of the documents.
