The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court Friday to lift a judge's order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former President Donald Trump's Florida home last month.
The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court Friday to lift a judge's order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former President Donald Trump's Florida home last month.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's appointment of a so-called special master to review the documents, and the resulting legal tussle it has caused, appear certain to slow by weeks the department’s investigation into the holding of classified documents at the Florida property after Trump left office. It remains unclear whether Trump, who has been laying the groundwork for a potential presidential run, or anyone else might be charged.
On Thursday night, she assigned Raymond Dearie, the former chief judge of the federal court based in Brooklyn, to serve as the arbiter — also known as a special master. She also declined to lift an order that prevented the department from using for its investigation about 100 seized documents marked as classified, citing ongoing disputes about the nature of the documents that she said merited a neutral review.
Cannon has said investigators were free to do other investigative work that did not involve a review of the documents, but the department said Friday that was largely impractical. Noting the discovery of dozens of empty folders at Mar-a-Lago marked classified, it said the judge's hold appeared to bar it from “further reviewing the records to discern any patterns in the types of records that were retained, which could lead to identification of other records still missing.