Trump has no plans to appeal the firing of the Mar-a-Lago special master

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CNN —

Former President Donald Trump does not plan to appeal to the Supreme Court a lower court order ending a special master’s review of documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate, a source familiar with the matter said this is on CNN.

Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that a lower court judge erred when he ordered the appointment of a third party, or special master, to review about 100 classified documents found by investigators during their search. his home in Florida in August.

The former president’s legal team argued then that they needed an outside expert to decide whether any of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago could be privileged. They have until Thursday to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

On Thursday afternoon, the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the mandate enforcing its decision, meaning the time period given to Trump to seek an injunction to halt the decision has expired.

The Trump team’s decision not to appeal will mark the end of a months-long legal battle over whether the review should take place and will allow the Justice Department to advance its investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents. .

Trump has not fared well of late on the Supreme Court, even with three of his nominees.

Last month, for example, the court cleared the way for the Internal Revenue Service to release the Trumps’ tax returns to a Democratic-led House committee. No objections to the order were noted. The court in October declined to intervene in a separate dispute over classified documents seized from his Florida estate.

Meanwhile, Trump recently called for an end to the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and restore him to power in a social media post.

Thursday’s ruling came after the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a landmark opinion in favor of the Biden Justice Department and overturned US District Judge Aileen Cannons’ order requesting a special master to determine which documents were should not be limited to investigators. The three-judge panel said Cannon, an appointee of the Trumps, should not have intervened in the first place.

The law is clear, the appeals court wrote. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that only allows former presidents to do so.

With the 11th Circuit issuing its mandate Thursday afternoon, the case will now return to Cannon, who was ordered by the appeals court to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit.

The 11th Circuit’s opinion jointly issued by a three-judge panel made up of Republican nominees, including two of the Trumps dismantled Trump’s arguments as to why a special master was needed. The court said that only in exceptional circumstances should courts intervene in Justice Department investigations that are still in their early stages, and that standard has not been met.

This restraint guards against unnecessary judicial interference in the course of criminal investigations in a sphere of power vested in the executive branch, the court wrote.

The appeals court said its new decision will take effect Thursday unless a party in the case successfully seeks an order known as a stay stopping the decision from taking effect while it is appealed.

The appeals court’s opinion was a scathing rebuke of how Cannon inserted himself into the dispute. In addition to reversing the order, the appeals court ordered him to dismiss the entire case.

The appeals court focused on the idea, implied in its order appointing the special master, that Trump deserves special treatment because he is a former president.

It is indeed unusual for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president but not in a way that affects our legal review or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation, the court said.

To create that special exception, the 11th Circuit wrote, would conflict with our founding principle of Nations that our law applies to all, without regard to numbers, wealth, or rank.

Trump sought the special master in the weeks after the August search, which secured a court order from Cannon. Judge Raymond Dearie, a senior judge sitting in Brooklyn, was assigned by Cannon to lead a review of the thousands of documents that remain.

During oral arguments in the 11th Circuit case, Trumps attorney James Trusty said only about 900 of those documents were at issue. Trumps legal team has argued that the documents are his personal records or are privileged and should be kept out of the scope of the investigation.

Attorneys for the Justice Department argued that the special master’s process stood to drag on for weeks, if not months, impeding an investigation into the documents. Prosecutors said that without access to other documents, they could not question witnesses about materials found mixed with classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

The Justice Department’s effort is now being led by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed last week to lead that investigation and another investigation into efforts to reverse Trump’s 2020 election loss that could implicate former president and current candidate for the White House in 2024.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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