DOJ can resume criminal probe of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, appeals court says
Source: CNN
CNN — A federal appeals court is allowing the Justice Department to continue looking at documents marked as classified that were seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort. The emergency intervention upends a trial judge’s order over those documents that blocked federal investigators’ work on the documents, and is a strong rebuke of the Trump team’s attempt to suggest without evidence that materials were somehow declassified.
A special master’s review of that subset of about 100 records, which would’ve allowed Trump’s legal team to see them, is now partially stopped. The special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, is able to continue his work reviewing the rest of the material seized from Mar-a-Lago, to make sure records belonging to Trump or that he may be able to claim are confidential aren’t used by investigators. “It is self-evident that the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the storage of the classified records did not result in ‘exceptionally grave damage to the national security,’” the three-judge panel from the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals stated.
“Ascertaining that necessarily involves reviewing the documents, determining who had access to them and when, and deciding which (if any) sources or methods are compromised.” Throughout the litigation, Trump’s lawyers have raised vague questions about whether the materials are in fact classified. But they have not straightforwardly asserted in court that the former President declassified them, even as Trump himself has claimed outside of court that he did.
Court rebukes Trump on declassified claims
Wednesday night, the appeals court panel called Trump’s legal team out. “Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President,” the court wrote. “But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified. And before the special master, Plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents.”
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/21/politics/appeals-court-mar-a-lago-criminal-classified-documents/index.html
Article being updated.
Previous update -
A special master's review of that subset of about 100 records, which would've allowed Trump's legal team to see them, is now partially stopped. The special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, is able to continue his work reviewing the rest of the material seized from Mar-a-Lago, to make sure records belonging to Trump or that he may be able to claim are confidential aren't used by investigators.
"It is self-evident that the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the storage of the classified records did not result in 'exceptionally grave damage to the national security,'" the three-judge panel from the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals stated. "Ascertaining that necessarily involves reviewing the documents, determining who had access to them and when, and deciding which (if any) sources or methods are compromised."
This story is breaking and will be updated.
Original article -
The emergency intervention upends a trial judge's order over those documents that blocked federal investigators' work on the documents.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
= new reply since forum marked as read
This is very good!
Last edited Wed Sep 21, 2022, 08:37 PM - Edit history (1)
Open and shut.
constitute irreparable harm . . . every potential defendant could
point to the same harm and invoke the equitable powers of the district court.”
has basically been the argument of every legal pundit, along with the quip about every defendant also demanding a "Special Master" for their cases!
as a retired fed, I know from experience that "government issue" is a thing! 
Until fairly recently (I guess the past 20 or so years when places like Staples and Office Max were selling office supplies on GSA Schedule), even the Skillcraft ballpoint pens were classically customized like this -
My dad worked for the VA for 20 years (before it became the Department of Veterans Affairs, from the mid-50s to mid 70s) and I grew up seeing those pens.
vs Dearie! 
but some of the legal pundits mentioned there was the option to request an en banc review of this, and I expect the arguments about whether to do that or not are probably fierce between the "client" (who wants to gum up the works and drag it out) and his attorneys. 
A bunch of the usual MSNBC legal pundits (former US Attorneys, etc) mentioned "possible en banc" last night, although they were still smirking about the beat-down that Cannon got with that ruling!
Weissmann actually clarified by retweeting this last night -
Link to tweet
@AWeissmann_
·
Follow
In the weeds as to what Trump cd do now. But SCOTUS review is a losing proposition. And the Dearie SM proceedings are now largely about irrelevancies. And Dearie will make short work of it.
Steve Vladeck
@steve_vladeck
Eleventh Circuit Rule 35-4 expressly prohibits en banc reconsideration of panel rulings on applications for stays.
In English, if Trump wants to continue to defend Judge Cannon's injunction, his only remaining option is #SCOTUS (where, IMHO, he'll lose):
https://ca11.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/courtdocs/clk/Rules_Bookmark_AUG22.pdf
Image
9:44 PM · Sep 21, 2022
And Katyal had this -
Link to tweet
@neal_katyal
·
Follow
Trump can try to go to the US Supreme Court but it's a loser every day of the week. He just got obliterated by the Court of Appeals. Take a look at this, from the unanimous court (including 2 of 3 who were Trump appointees)
Image
8:09 PM · Sep 21, 2022
Was checking on Bradley Moss who was also on last night with Lawrence O'Donnell and saw this -
Link to tweet
@BradMossEsq
·
Follow
It's two of your former client's appointees, Jenna. They applied the actual law.
Jenna Ellis 🍊🦅
@JennaEllisEsq
The 11th Circuit is full of it. 💩
7:58 PM · Sep 21, 2022
may have asked for that type of material as they were looking for stuff that was subject to the Presidential Records Act and if they found anything in the boxes taken from the search where that law applied, that would be something they keep.
When I was in the lab, we kept a "diary" of our work for the day, which was kept in a bound green book that looked like these (there were big ones and small ones) -
When we filled them up, we preserved them and periodically our admin staff would come around and collect them (with all kinds of other documents based on the Records Schedule), would box them, label the boxes, and transport them to the big National Archives Warehouse here in Philly for storage.
So THAT is how documents that are preserved are dealt with. That stuff belongs to the federal government and is preserved depending on the agency's Records Control Schedule - in some cases destroyed 1 year or 5 years or 20 years later, and in other cases, the material is preserved permanently. Other material could be destroyed (shredded, magnetized, etc). And I expect for the Office of the Presidency, most of that stuff is to be preserved "permanently" (something that I think happened after Nixon with passage of that Presidential Records Act).
and with private industry, particularly for those doing manufacturing, that "information" is often used for patent applications.
And depending on how they write the government contracts, in many cases it explicitly states that "the government owns" that work product. I have mentioned that in threads about NASA's various spaceflights. I.e., "NASA" is not "building" those rockets but is working in collaboration with multiple contractors to design and assemble those craft, where those contracts give "ownership" to "the government" and NASA can slap its name on the side (and that includes that poor Artemis Project rocket that is apparently delayed until next week at the earliest).
including staffers taking actual WH artifacts (e.g., Lincoln bust and the criminal taking a framed photo of 45 with XI), as they left!
