In a major win for Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), a federal appeals court has ended the “special master” review of the documents seized in the raid of former president Trump’s private residence in Mar-a-Lago.
A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals terminated the outside review of thousands of documents and upended a lower court ruling generally seen as favorable to Trump and his legal team.
As reported previously by The Dallas Express, a special master is an individual appointed by a court to carry out some sort of action on its behalf.
In this case, the special master was tasked with reviewing the documents seized from Trump’s Florida residence and making determinations about what may be protected under attorney-client privilege or executive privilege, which is the right of a president to withhold information in the public interest.
The DOJ has persistently argued that the independent review and classification of these documents was erroneous and delayed their investigation and the timeline for issuing possible criminal charges against the former president.
Two of the three judges on the 11th Circuit panel, Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher, who made the decision to overturn the lower court decision were Trump appointees to the bench. The third, Chief Judge William Pryor, was a George W. Bush appointee.
Central to the panel’s decision was its determination that lower court judge Aileen Cannon did not have the jurisdiction to delay the government in its investigation.
“The law is clear. 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 allows only former presidents to do so,” the appeals court ruling read.
“Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations,” the ruling continued. “And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
In laying down its final decision, the panel wrote, “Accordingly, we agree with the government that the district court improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction and that dismissal of the entire proceeding is required.”
The ruling is the latest in a string of blows the former president has endured. One week prior to the panel’s decision, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special prosecutor to pursue the investigation against Trump for his handling of documents upon leaving office.
Trump faces potential violations of the Espionage Act, which relates to the misuse of classified documents, as well as record-keeping laws governing the transfer of records by an outgoing president to the National Archives.