Posted on 12/01/22
| News Source: The Hill
An appeals court on Thursday ruled that the appointment of a special master after the search of former President Trump’s Florida home was improper, determining that a lower court could not limit the Justice Department investigation into the mishandling of White House records at Mar-a-Lago.
“The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so,” a three-judge panel wrote for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Either approach would be a reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations.”
The ruling paves the way for the release of some 22,000 pages of government documents stored at Trump’s Florida home to Justice Department investigators, potentially speeding any eventual prosecutions from a case assigned to a newly appointed special counsel.
It’s also a major loss for Trump, who sought to challenge the approval of a warrant to search his home. In the warrant affidavit, the government said they had probable cause to believe the documents’ removal could violate the Espionage Act.
The ruling, authored by two Trump appointees as well as an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said the pleas by Trump’s attorneys to keep the special master process would represent “a dramatic and unwarranted” use of the court’s authority.