ATLANTA, Ga. — A panel of judges on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled to overturn the appointment of a special master tasked with reviewing thousands of documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate this summer.
The ruling by the three-judge panel, including two Trump appointees, will effectively eliminate what officials had described as a major obstacle in their ongoing criminal investigation into whether Trump illegally retained highly classified records after leaving the presidency and obstructed efforts by the government to recover them.
The panel signaled in a hearing last week that they were likely to order an end to the review, repeatedly expressing concern that the appointment of special master Raymond Dearie by Florida district judge Aileen Cannon lacked any clear precedent.
They were also skeptical of assertions from Trump's lawyer, Jim Trusty, who described the search of Trump's home as "an extraordinary case” that warranted intervention from an outside arbiter to review all the materials seized in the August search.
The Justice Department had previously accused Trump's legal team of using the special master proceedings as a "shell game" to try and delay the progress of their investigation, and called Cannon's appointment of a special master an “extraordinary judicial intrusion into a core executive branch function."
11th Circuit Court of Appea... by ABC Action News
The 11th Circuit had previously granted a request from DOJ to stay portions of a ruling by Cannon that had blocked the government from using roughly 100 documents with classification markings recovered from Mar-a-Lago in its investigation and demanded they be handed over to special master Dearie.
Trump's attorneys then appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which declined to take up the matter.
Following that ruling, officials then quickly moved for an expedited appeal to have the 11th Circuit end Dearie's review in its entirety -- arguing the government's inability to access the roughly 13,000 remaining non-classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago was also hampering their investigation.
Investigators will now be able to use the documents as evidence as they question witnesses and further examine the circumstances behind Trump's decision to remove thousands of government records, including some of the nation's highest protected secrets, from the White House and store them at his private club.
Earlier this month, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee the Mar-a-Lago docs investigation as well as the separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Last week, Trump's lawyers separately asked Cannon to order the Justice Department to hand over the full unredacted affidavit that was used to justify the search warrant on Trump's residence. She has yet to respond to their motion, but the Justice Department has previously expressed concern that disclosure of the details in the affidavit could jeopardize their investigation and potentially endanger cooperating witnesses.
