DOJ asks court to expedite special lead review appeal in Mar-a-Lago case

CNN
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The Department of Justice requested a federal appeals court to expedite its timeline to consider the department’s appeal against a judge’s order requiring a special master to review classified Mar-a-Lago documents.

In the petition for dispatch filed with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on On Friday, the DOJ proposed a briefing schedule that would conclude written briefs by Nov. 11, while asking the appeals court to schedule a hearing as soon as possible. According to the current appeal schedule, the last written brief is due approximately one month later, and oral arguments have not yet been scheduled.

« Expediting the appeal would serve the interests of justice because the portions of the district court’s injunction that were not stayed restrict the government’s ability to justify the strong public interest in expeditiously pursuing the criminal investigation and national security underlying these proceedings, » the DOJ wrote in the filing.

The Department of Justice had requested the intervention of the 11th Circuit in the Mar-a-Lago Dispute over documents after former President Donald Trump successfully sued to secure the appointment of a special master — a third-party attorney tasked with reviewing evidence and screening confidential documents — to review the approximately 11,000 documents that the FBI had seized during its August 8 search. its Palm Beach, Florida residence and resort.

The DOJ noted in the Friday night filing how quickly the emergency litigation unfolded when he successfully attempted to exempt documents marked as classified from review. The department pointed to part of the 11th Circuit’s opinion granting the exception that Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who ordered the special master, acted beyond her authority in granting the request for relief. third-party review.

« Although the panel’s decision relates specifically to documents bearing classification marks, its reasoning arguably applies more broadly, » the DOJ said.

The department wrote to the court that an expedited schedule for briefings and arguments could allow its investigators, if successful in the appeal, to resume their full investigation.

The government, the DOJ wrote in the filing, « is therefore unable to review documents that have been mixed with materials bearing classification marks, including documents that may shed light, for example, on how materials bearing classification marks were transferred to the applicant’s residence, how they were stored, and who may have accessed them.

For his part, Trump opposes the request to speed things up.

Earlier this month, the appeals court overturned key elements of Cannon’s original decision, allowing the Justice Department to resume the criminal investigation’s use of documents marked as classified, which may well be central to the investigation.

This story was updated with additional details on Friday.