A three-judge appeals court panel sided with the Justice Department's (DOJ) effort to continue its review of classified documents seized in the FBI‘s August raid of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence.
The FBI seized thousands of pages of documents marked classified or top secret from the president's residence but Justice Department is focused on investigating nearly 100 specific documents and their contents. The DOJ argued the documents are a national security concern but Trump's legal team asserted the documents could be a defense against future criminal charges.
In the judges' opinion, the panel signaled its hesitation surrounding the former president's claims that he declassified all of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago, according to The Hill.
They also questioned why Trump would “have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings.”
“Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents. Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents,” they wrote in the opinion.
The judges highlighted the Justice Department's argument that the lower court “erred in exercising its jurisdiction to enjoin the United States's use of the classified records in its criminal investigation and to require the United States to submit the marked classified documents to a special master for review.”
The appellate judges in their opinion also allowed a review by special master Judge Raymond Dearie to continue simultaneously. Originally, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon temporarily barred Justice Department investigators from using the documents in its investigation of Donald Trump. (Related: Special Master Deals Loss to Trump FBI Raid Case in Latest Ruling)
The DOJ is investigating whether the former president violated the Espionage Act through his mishandling of the documents.
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