(Presidentialwire.com)- The FBI’s special master assessment of the materials it had taken from former President Donald Trump’s private house in early August was concluded by a federal appeals court on Thursday.
The special master was appointed by a lower court to review the 11,000 documents obtained from Mar-a-Lago and determine which ones should not be given to investigators. However, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision.
In a widely criticized decision that many legal observers did not anticipate to stand, a judge nominated by Trump, US District Judge Aileen Cannon, granted the special master’s request, which was made by Trump’s legal team.
CNN highlighted that the decision, which the network called a “significant blow” for Trump, “removes a major impediment to the Justice Department’s probe into the mismanagement of official information from Trump’s tenure in the White House.”
The appeals court stated that “the law is plain.” “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.”
According to court documents, the Justice Department is looking into cases of espionage, unlawful manipulation of government records, and obstruction of justice. After investigators claimed to have found information that led them to assume that Trump had not cooperated with a subpoena for all classified materials housed at his Florida estate, the investigation erupted into the public eye with the August search.
The three-judge panel, composed entirely of GOP appointees, collectively produced the judgment, undermining Trump’s justifications for the necessity of a special master. The court ruled that this situation did not meet the requirement that courts only engage in early-stage Justice Department investigations under unusual circumstances.
Unless a party to the case successfully obtains an injunction, known as a stay, postponing the judgment’s implementation while an appeal is pending, the appeals court’s new ruling will take effect in seven days, according to its announcement.
Trump’s legal team is considering the possibility of appealing the decision to the Supreme Court but has not decided yet.
The decision is a sharp criticism of Cannon’s involvement in the argument. The appeals court is directing her to dismiss the case as a whole and overturn the order.
