FBI raids Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

[Rick Plant]

An appeals court rules the DOJ can regain access to documents seized from Mar-a-Lago
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/21/1124431613/appeals-court-justice-mar-a-lago

[Rick Plant]

Trump-appointed judge backtracks on her previous ruling after 11th Circuit delivers stinging rebuke



Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon backtracked on previous aspects of her ruling in favor of former President Donald Trump on Thursday, just hours after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a stinging rebuke that overturned her decision to block the government from using top secret documents as part of its investigation.

In a new filing flagged by Politico's Kyle Cheney, Cannon amended her previous order to state that the seized material subject to a special master review no longer includes the "approximately one-hundred documents bearing classification markings."

The 11th Circuit, a three-judge panel that consists of two Trump appointees, criticized arguments made by the former president's lawyers, who wanted the DOJ to be forced to stop its probe into Trump's decision to allegedly keep top secret government documents stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

In their ruling, the judges noted that Trump "has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents. Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents."

Cannon's original ruling was widely criticized by many legal experts, who said that the United States Department of Justice was likely to win an appeal at the 11th Circuit.

https://www.rawstory.com/aileen-cannon-2658324050/

[Rick Plant]

Trump's path to stall documents probe narrows after legal setbacks



(Reuters) -Donald Trump's bid to impede a criminal investigation into his possession of documents taken from the White House has begun to unravel, legal experts said, after courtroom setbacks including doubts expressed by judges about the former U.S. president's claim that he declassified records seized at his Florida home.

Trump has experienced disappointments on multiple fronts this week as his lawyers try to slow down the Justice Department investigation that kicked into high gear with an Aug. 8 court-approved search of his Mar-a-Lago residence in which FBI agents found 11,000 documents including about 100 marked as classified.

A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday ruled that federal investigators could immediately resume examining the classified records, reversing Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's decision to wall off these documents while an independent arbiter assesses whether any should be withheld as privileged.

"Cannon's ruling is so far out of the norm, and the 11th Circuit did such a good job of thoroughly dismantling her opinion," said Jonathan Shaub, a former attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel who now teaches law at the University of Kentucky.

Trump may appeal the 11th Circuit's ruling to the Supreme Court, but experts doubted the justices would agree to hear it. The 11th Circuit's panel included two judges appointed by Trump.

At issue in the investigation - one of several legal woes entangling Trump as he considers another run for the presidency in 2024 - is whether he broke federal laws preventing the destruction or concealment of government records and the unauthorized possession of national defense information. The Justice Department is also looking into whether Trump unlawfully tried to obstruct the investigation.

Trump has not been charged with any crime and the mere existence of an investigation does not mean he will be.

As part of Trump's counterattack against the investigation, he has made public claims that he personally declassified the seized records.

"If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking it," Trump told Fox News on Wednesday. "You're sending it to Mar-a-Lago or wherever you're sending it, and there doesn't have to be a process."

Trump's lawyers, however, have stopped short of stating in court that he declassified the documents, though they have not conceded that they are classified.

The 11th Circuit called Trump's declassification argument a "red herring." The three statutes underpinning the FBI's search warrant at Mar-a-Lago make it a crime to mishandle government records, regardless of their classification status. The 11th Circuit also said it could not discern why Trump would have "an individual interest in or need" for any of the documents marked as classified.

Trump's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

'REAL EVIDENCE'

To make matters worse for Trump, Judge Raymond Dearie - the arbiter, or special master, named by Cannon to vet the seized documents - asked Trump's lawyers on Tuesday why he should not consider records marked classified as genuinely classified. Dearie pressed Trump's lawyers to make clear whether they plan to assert that the records had been declassified as Trump claims.

Trump's lawyers proposed Dearie to serve as special master.

"Unless Trump can come up with real evidence saying he went through some kind of declassification procedure and declassified this stuff, there's no way he can prevail on this, and if he had that evidence his lawyers would have presented it," said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University.

Even as he has stated that he declassified the records, Trump also has publicly suggested that the FBI planted them at Mar-a-Lago. Dearie on Thursday asked Trump's lawyers to provide any evidence backing this up.

David Laufman, the Justice Department's former head of counterintelligence, said Trump's comments on Fox News were highly incriminating.

"Prosecutors must lick their chops every time Trump makes a public statement that is equivalent to making evidentiary admissions, like talking about sending documents marked classified down to Mar-a-Lago because, according to his account, he thought about declassifying them," Laufman said.

"It was a great day for the rule of law," Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor and current law professor at the University of Michigan, said of the 11th Circuit's ruling. "It says that the law matters more than anyone's loyalty to a particular person."

© Reuters

[Joe Elliott]

Criminal Donald now claims he had the power to declassify documents just “by thinking about it.” No really, he said this. Mind control as a criminal defense. What’s left of his psyche is shattering under the pressure. He knows it’s all over for him.

If a President can toss out an election by just thinking it was corrupt, why can't he declassify documents by just thinking they should be declassified?

[Rick Plant]

Appeals court rules DOJ can regain access to sensitive documents seized in Trump search

Watch:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-classified-documents-justice-department-11th-circuit-court-of-appeals-stay/

[Rick Plant]

Special Master Gives Trump One Week To Prove Mar-A-Lago ‘Planted’ Evidence Claim

As legal battles mount for Donald Trump, the special master reviewing documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago has given the former president one week to back up his claims that evidence was planted during the search.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Trump's team was happy — until the 11th circuit derailed them on Wednesday: report



Donald Trump's legal team thought they were effectively delaying the FBI investigation into the public documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago until the conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals stymied their efforts according to a new report.

MSNBC's Yasmin Vossoughian interview Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell about the latest in the special master review ordered by controversial Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon.

Vossoughian noted a story Lowell published on Saturday.

"Trump’s goal in requesting a special master was multi-pronged from the start, according to sources familiar with the matter, and the principal – though publicly unstated – aim was to apply the brakes on the criminal investigation, after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago took Trump’s lawyers by surprise," Lowell reported. "Trump effectively secured a two-and-a-half week pause in the criminal investigation from the time that Cannon enjoined the department on Labor Day to the appeals court ruling on Wednesday – a delay that former US attorneys said would not have materially affected the case."

Lowell expanded on his report.

Lowell said, "I've been talking to a couple of Trump advisers, people close to trump's legal team, they say the whole effort to try to get the special master was principally in order to slow down the investigation."

"And that seemed to be working until Wednesday of last week when the 11th Circuit ruled that the one hundred classified documents actually could not part of the special master process and that the Justice Department could regain access to those documents," he explained. "Which means now that federal investigators can move ahead to that criminal investigation."

"The most serious parts of that criminal investigation — the obstruction of justice element and the violation of the Espionage Act, the willful retention of national defense information — those are really, really serious potential charges. The fact the Justice Department has those materials means that Trump's effort to delay this has been effectively stymied."

Watch: