‘THE LAW IS CLEAR’

Appeals Court Shuts Down Special Master Review of Mar-a-Lago Docs

The move clears the way for the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the former president’s mishandling of government records to continue.

A federal appeals court panel on Thursday halted an independent arbiter’s review of the thousands of records seized from Donald Trump’s Florida estate in August, clearing the way for the Justice Department to continue its criminal investigation into the mishandling of government documents from the former president’s time in office. “This appeal requires us to consider whether the district court had jurisdiction to block the United States from using lawfully seized records in a criminal investigation,” the three-judge panel wrote of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to appoint Judge Raymond Dearie as special master to the tranche of documents, to determine what might be off-limits to federal investigators. “The answer is no.” In addition to reversing Cannon’s order, the panel’s decision requires her to dismiss the entire case, arguing that she was wrong to allow the delay of a federal probe. “The law is clear,” the panel wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant.”