US court lets investigators resume review of classified documents seized at Trump home
- US investigators are evaluating whether to bring criminal charges over the storage of top-secret records at Mar-a-Lago
- Federal court ruling amounts to a victory for the US Justice Department which had its investigation delayed by lower court
The US Justice Department can resume reviewing classified records seized by the FBI from former president Donald Trump’s Florida home pending appeal, a federal court ruled on Wednesday, giving a boost to the criminal investigation into whether the records were mishandled or compromised.
The Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by federal prosecutors to block US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s stay barring them from using the classified documents in their probe until an independent arbiter, called a special master, vets the materials to weed out any that could be deemed privileged and withheld from investigators.
The appeals court also said it would agree to reverse a portion of the lower court’s order that required the government to hand over records with classification markings for the special master’s review.
“We conclude that the United States would suffer irreparable harm from the district court’s restrictions on its access to this narrow – and potentially critical – set of materials, as well as the court’s requirement that the United States submit the classified records to the special master for review,” the three-judge panel wrote.
The panel added that the decision is “limited in nature”, as the Justice Department had asked only for a partial stay pending appeal, and that the panel was not able to decide on the merits of the case itself.
“We decide only the traditional equitable considerations, including whether the United States has shown a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits, the harm each party might suffer from a stay, and where the public interest lies,” the panel said.
The three judges who made the decision were Robin Rosenbaum, an appointee of Democratic former president Barack Obama, and Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher, both of whom were appointed by Trump.
