The Department of Justice is furious with the Florida district judge who forbade it from using documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
District Court Judge Aileen Cannon ordered the DOJ to stop reviewing documents that FBI agents took from former President Trump’s Florida home. The Justice Department balked and vowed to appeal. DOJ attorneys asked the judge to stay her order while they appeal but Cannon has so far not yielded.
DOJ lawyers argue the dispute with Trump concerns weighty national security overtones and accuse Trump of treating it like an “overdue library book scenario.”
The Conservative Brief further reported:
The Department of Justice said it “seeks a limited but critical stay,” to “a discrete set of just over 100 records marked as classified” and “whose unauthorized retention may constitute a crime.”
It said that the records it wants to review have markings that show that unauthorized disclosure “reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security,” including “exceptionally grave damage
“The government’s stay motion demonstrates that the government is likely to succeed on the merits because Plaintiff cannot plausibly establish any property interest in or privilege,” it said in the letter to Judge Aileen Cannon.
“These records are at the core of the government’s investigation, and the government’s inability to review and use them significantly constrains its investigation,” it said. “The compelled disclosure of records marked as classified to a special master further harms the Executive Branch’s interest in limiting access to such materials absent any valid purpose served by their review.”
It came in response to a motion filed by attorneys for former President Donald Trump in which they argued against a stay.
“[Trump] instead references other seized records that contain personal information or could be subject to attorney-client privilege, none of which are at issue in this stay motion,” the DOJ also wrote. “As to the records marked as classified, Plaintiff asserts that the government has not ‘proven’ their classification status.”
The attorneys for former President Trump filed their motion on Monday as the former president dismissed the FBI seizing documents from his Mar-a-Lago residence as a “misguided storage dispute,” The Daily Mail reported.
The former president’s attorneys praised US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to pause the review of his documents as they await the appointment of a special master as a “sensible preliminary step towards restoring order from chaos.”
“In what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control, the Government wrongfully seeks to criminalize the possession by the 45th President of his own Presidential and personal records,” the filing said.
“What is clear regarding all of the seized materials is that they belong with either President Trump (as his personal property to be returned pursuant to Rule 41(g)) or with NARA, but not with the Department of Justice,” it said.
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