Thursday, October 13, 2022

Looks like he found a limit

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to reinstate Judge Aileen Cannon’s order that a special master review classified documents taken in an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida home and private club. There were no noted dissents.

The one-sentence order turned aside an emergency request from the former president to intervene in the document review.

  WaPo
The decision does not affect the Justice Department’s access to the same documents as part of a criminal investigation. The more than 100 documents marked as classified are just a small portion of the 11,000 records seized by federal agents in August amid concerns that Trump had unlawfully retained official White House records after leaving office.

The high court left in place part of a Sept. 21 decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that barred the special master, federal Judge Raymond Dearie, from reviewing the documents.

[...]

The appeals court said certain documents are deemed classified because they contain information that could harm the national security, and for that reason people may have access to them only if they need to know that information.

Trump’s lawyers had said the decision to block Dearie's access “impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the special master.”

  NBC
I bet Judge Dearie is relieved.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, on behalf of the Justice Department, said in court papers that Trump would suffer “no harm at all” if the documents are temporarily withheld from the special master. Addressing Trump’s potential ownership stake in the documents, including possible assertions of attorney-client privilege of executive privilege, Prelogar said Trump had “no plausible claims.”

[...]

Although the Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, including three justices he appointed, Trump has not recently fared well in other such emergency applications, including his attempt to prevent White House documents from being handed over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and his bid to avoid disclosure of his financial records to prosecutors in New York.
Well, when he's reinstated to the oval office and gets his new powers, he'll just have to abolish the Supreme Court.  All lawsuits will go to him to decide.

UPDATE:  Short and sweet



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