Trump: US justice department appeals judge’s Mar-a-Lago investigation hold

The justice department asked a federal appeals court on Friday to lift a judge’s order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home last month.

The department told the 11th circuit US court of appeals in Atlanta that the judge’s hold, imposed last week, had impeded the “government’s efforts to protect the nation’s security” and interfered with its investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago. It asked the court to remove that order so work could resume, and to halt a judge’s directive forcing the department to provide the seized classified documents to an independent arbiter for his review.

The government and the public would suffer irreparable harm absent a stay” of the order, department lawyers wrote in their brief to the appeals court.

US district judge Aileen Cannon’s appointment of a so-called special master to review the documents, and the resulting legal tussle it has caused, appear certain to slow by weeks the department’s investigation into the holding of classified documents at the Florida property after Trump left office. The justice department has been investigating possible violations of multiple statutes, including under the Espionage Act, but it remains unclear whether Trump, who has been laying the groundwork for a potential presidential run, or anyone else might be charged.

The FBI says it took about 11,000 documents, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office, while serving a court-authorized search warrant at the home on 8 August. Weeks after the search, Trump lawyers asked a judge to appoint a special master to conduct an independent review of the records.

Cannon granted the request last week, assigning a special master to review the records and weed out any that may be covered by claims of attorney-client or executive privilege. She directed the department to halt its use of the classified documents for investigative purposes until further court order, or until the completion of the special master‘s work.

On Thursday night, she assigned Raymond Dearie, the former chief judge of the federal court based in Brooklyn, to serve in the role. She also declined to lift her earlier order, citing ongoing disputes about the nature of the documents that she said merited a neutral review by an outside arbiter.

“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,” she wrote.

The justice department on Friday night told the appeals court that Cannon’s injunction “unduly interferes with the criminal investigation”, prohibiting investigators from “accessing the seized records to evaluate whether charges are appropriate”. It also prevents the FBI from using the seized records in its criminal investigation to determine which documents, if any, were disclosed and to whom, the department said.