The Justice Department argued Friday that an appeals court should overturn a ruling that appointed an independent expert to review more than 10,000 documents seized by the FBI during the August search of former President Trump’s home.
In a filing before the 11th Circuit, the Justice Department dismissed a lower court ruling in Trump’s favor, as well as the former president’s argument that he should have an independent expert review the evidence collected at Mar-a-Lago.
“The uncontested record demonstrates that the search was conducted pursuant to an authorized court order, and there has been no violation of, much less callous disregard for, the plaintiff’s rights.”
“Plaintiff,” they wrote, “failed in his obligation to establish the necessity of the seized records—indeed, a substantial number of them are not even his own—or to establish any irreparable harm in his absence,” the Department of Justice wrote. Justice”.
The filing comes after the Justice Department won an initial battle with the 11th Circuit, which agreed to divert about 100 classified records from independent expert review. That opinion also suggested that Florida-based federal district court judge Aileen Cannon erred in appointing that expert witness.
According to the Department, Trump failed to demonstrate and Cannon did not fully weigh every aspect of the legal evidence needed before a court can impose limits on a federal investigation. That includes whether the officials showed a “callous disregard” for someone’s rights, and whether they would be “irreparably injured” by not getting their property returned, neither of which Trump can justify.
The report reiterated many of the arguments the department first made to the district court: Trump cannot use executive privilege to block the current executive’s functions, and he also has no right to presidential records, which are not his personal property. But he also made stronger claims about why he needs the records, both classified and unclassified, to aid the investigation.
Trump: Presidents can declassify documents “even thinking about it”
The Justice Department detailed how unclassified records, and how classified records were mixed with them, are evidence in themselves. “Dates in unclassified records can be highly probative in a government investigation. For example, if any records are commingled with records that have classification marks after the date of Plaintiff’s mandate, that could establish that these materials continued to be accessed after Plaintiff left the White House,” the Department of Justice wrote. Justice”.
In summary, unclassified records that were co-stored with records bearing classification marks can identify who was responsible for the unauthorized retention of these records, the relevant time periods in which the records were created or accessed, and who could have accessed or seen, he continued.
The Justice Department also pointed to Trump’s claims that he had declassified records, which is not a central issue for any of the assessed crimes, noting that “in his myriad filings, however, the plaintiff has never actually represented, much less offered evidence of having declassified the seized records.”
The administration also reiterated why Trump is not entitled to any of the records. “Plaintiff cannot invoke executive privilege to prohibit review and use of his own records by the executive branch. Any assertion of executive privilege would similarly be made against ‘the very executive branch on whose behalf the privilege is invoked’”.
