U.S. Justice Dept seeks fast ruling in Trump case
- The Justice Department has asked an appeals court for an accelerated filing schedule.
- The government says it can’t access the 11,000 non-classified documents found during the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
- Those documents could shed light on how the documents were sent to or stored.
The U.S. Justice Department took steps to speed up its appeal of an order that put a special master in charge of reviewing the records the FBI took from the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump.
In a court filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that it still can’t get to the non-classified documents, which is slowing down important parts of its investigation into why Trump kept government records at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The Justice Department has asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to make sure that all papers in the case are filed by November 11 and to hold any hearings that are needed as soon as the briefing is done.
The government said that Trump’s lawyers are against the request. Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, said in an email, “After having weeks to prepare their arguments, the DOJ is now picking a fight over a nine-day difference in filing deadlines that isn’t necessary.”
The Justice Department said that it can’t look at the documents that were stored with the classified materials because it can’t access the about 11,000 non-classified documents that were found during the search.
The government said that these non-classified records “may shed light” on how the documents were sent to or stored at the Mar-a-Lago estate and who might have gotten to them.
According to a filing made on Friday, the records could also be used to prove that federal laws on obstruction and hiding or removing government records were broken.
The Justice Department said that an accelerated schedule could help the government, if it wins the appeal, “resume its full investigation more quickly without limits on how it can look at and use evidence found with a legal search warrant.”
The government lawyers also said that if the appeals court in Atlanta rules in favour of the Justice Department, it would end the lawsuits over the materials found during the search and the outside review of those documents.
This review, which is being done by Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie as a special master, is set to end on Dec. 16.
This month, the appeals court sided with the Justice Department and overturned parts of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling that had stopped the department from using classified materials found during the search as part of its investigation. For example, the department couldn’t talk about the contents of the sensitive records in interviews with witnesses or present charges to a grand jury based on the sensitive records.
As part of his case, the 11th Circuit also stopped Dearie from getting to the classified records.
Even though the Justice Department didn’t agree, Cannon gave Trump’s request for a third party to look over the seized documents on September 5. This process has already been slowed down because Trump and the government haven’t been able to sign a contract with an outside vendor to host the documents as part of the review.
Cannon also turned down Dearie’s request that Trump check the list of documents that were taken from the property. The former president’s lawyers said that this request went beyond what the special master could do.
Trump has said, without proof, that FBI agents planted evidence when they searched his resort on August 8, but his lawyers have not made the same claims in court.
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