HARD PASS

SCOTUS Rejects Trump’s Plea for Help in Secret Mar-a-Lago Docs Battle

There were no dissents noted in the one-sentence order, which summarily denied the former president’s emergency appeal for intervention in the case.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday refused to intervene in former President Donald Trump’s ongoing fight over a number of classified records scooped out of his Florida estate by federal agents in August. In an unsigned, one-sentence ruling, the Supreme Court denied Trump’s emergency appeal, which had asked it to restore Judge Aileen Cannon’s previous order that a special master be allowed to review the documents. There were no noted dissents. The decision comes two days after the Justice Department weighed in on the matter, arguing to the nation’s highest court in a filing that Trump had “no plausible claims” over the records, and would suffer “no harm at all” if they were temporarily withheld from the independent arbiter. The decision to bar the special master, federal Judge Raymond Dearie, from reviewing the classified records—roughly 100 of the total 11,000 documents seized at Mar-a-Lago—was handed down Sept. 21 by a three-judge panel, two of whom were appointed by Trump.