President Trump has just lost the special master given to him by a lower federal district court.
The 11th Circuit today reversed the district court order which granted Trump a special master to oversee the documents obtained in the Mar-a-Lago raid:
BREAKING: The 11th Circuit reverses the order granting Trump the special master review of docs seized at Mar-a-Lago, paving way for Justice Dept to obtain all materials for the criminal investigation
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) December 1, 2022
A U.S. appeals court has ended an independent review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate, removing a hurdle that delayed a criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret government information. https://t.co/WL8WwYsHDh
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 1, 2022
Here’s more from the AP:
A unanimous federal appeals court on Thursday ended an independent review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, removing a hurdle the Justice Department said had delayed its criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret government information.
The decision by the three-judge panel represents a significant win for federal prosecutors, clearing the way for them to use as part of their investigation the entire tranche of documents seized during an Aug. 8 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. It also amounts to a sharp repudiation of arguments by Trump’s lawyers, who for months had said that the former president was entitled to have a so-called “special master” conduct a neutral review of the thousands of documents taken from the property.
The ruling from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had been expected given the skeptical questions the judges directed at a Trump lawyer during arguments last week, and because two of the three judges on the panel had already ruled in favor of the Justice Department in an earlier dispute over the special master.
The decision was a unanimous opinion from the panel of Republican appointees, including two who were selected by Trump. In it, the court rejected each argument by Trump and his attorneys for why a special master was necessary, including his claims that various seized records were protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.
“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the judges wrote.
A Trump spokesperson said Thursday’s decision was “purely procedural” and did not address the “impropriety” of the raid, and promised that the ex-president would “continue to fight” against the Justice Department. Lawyers for Trump did not immediately respond when asked if they would appeal the ruling.
Trump appealed to the Supreme Court in October to lift the 11th Circuit’s stay of the federal district court decision blocking the DOJ from access to classified materials. But the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s request.
Given that, I don’t see much hope of the Supreme Court intervening in this new decision by the 11th Circuit to end the special master altogether.