A Florida court denied the Justice Department’s appeal on Thursday, preventing it from continuing to study the sensitive documents that the FBI had taken from Donald Trump’s Florida residence.
Instead, by assigning Senior District Judge Raymond Dearie as a “special master” to examine documents seized by the FBI, federal judge Aileen Cannon supported the former president.
Last month, Trump’s attorneys requested that a third party be assigned to evaluate the papers in order to filter out those that fall within the purview of executive privilege or attorney-client confidentiality.
The Justice Department said that wasn’t required, but when the court announced that it would appoint a “special master,” it declared that Dearie, the former top judge of the federal court in Brooklyn, would be eligible for the position.
However, it filed an appeal and requested the exclusion of 100 documents with the designation “classified” from the review.
It contended that, even if the documents were secret, it made no sense to say that the government had no right to see them.
In its appeal, the plaintiff claimed that he “does not and could not assert that he owns or has any possessory interest in classified records; that he has any right to have those government records returned to him; or that he can advance any plausible claims of attorney-client privilege with respect to such records that would bar the government from reviewing or using them.”