The Department of Justice went to a federal appeals court on Friday to ask for a stay that would block Judge Aileen M. Cannon's ruling that the DOJ is to stop its review of Trump's documents while a special master is brought in to review those documents himself. Cannon's order for a special master also put a halt to the DOJ's access to and investigation of those documents seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI on August 8.
According to Axios, the DOJ filed with the Atlanta based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, saying, "The court’s order hamstrings that investigation and places the FBI and Department of Justice under a Damoclean threat of contempt." The DOJ also had tried to stop the order for a special master from going through in the first place, saying that since the FBI had already reviewed the documents and determined which of them were protected under attorney-client privilege there was no need for an independent review.
"The district court has entered an unprecedented order enjoining the Executive Branch’s use of its own highly classified records in a criminal investigation with direct implications for national security," the DOJ said.
On Thursday, Cannon spurned the DOJ's request to resume its investigation while she also appointed Judge Raymond Dearie as the special master set to independently review the documents the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Biden's Department of Justice and Trump's team had been fighting over who would be the special master and Dearie, who was on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and a judge from the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, was preferred by the Trump team.
The DOJ asked the court to "stay only the portions of the order causing the most serious and immediate harm to the government and the public by (1) restricting the government’s review and use of records bearing classification markings and (2) requiring the government to disclose those records for a special-master review process."
According to Politico, prosecutors for the DOJ continue to broadly object to the appointment of a special master and to "suggest that a portion of one of Cannon’s orders directing that Trump’s lawyers be provided with copies of all the seized records is another improper intrusion on the Justice Department’s prerogatives."
The DOJ writes, "Yet the district court here ordered disclosure of highly sensitive material to a special master and to Plaintiff’s counsel—potentially including witnesses to relevant events—in the midst of an investigation, where no charges have been brought."
By this, the DOJ is suggesting that Trump's lawyers may become a target of their far-reaching probe to try to prove that Trump stored documents improperly in his home. This is one of two investigations into Trump by the DOJ. The other is attempting to prove that Trump tried to stage a coup to keep himself in office. Trump peacefully is disappointedly left office at the end of his first term, accepting the transfer of power between his administration and the next.
Politico writes that, according to the DOJ, Trump's lawyers should not be granted copies of the documents seized because they too could be called as witnesses or implicated in criminal activity.
No one, including Trump, has yet been charged with any criminal charges as a result of the seized documents.
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