Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
The Department of Justice desperately wants to resume its review of documents seized from Donald Trump’s Florida home.
On Friday, DOJ attorneys officially appealed the appointment of a Special Master to review which, if any, documents seized from Mar-a-Lago are protected under attorney-client privilege.
“District courts have no general equitable authority to superintend federal criminal investigations,” a brief filed in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reads. “[I]nstead, challenges to the government’s use of the evidence recovered in a search are resolved through ordinary criminal motions practice if and when charges are filed.”
Previously, Judge Aileen Cannon appointed Raymond Dearie, a senior federal judge, as Special Master. Dearie, one of two people put forth by Trump’s team, has begun his review, but the DOJ argues Cannon had no right to appoint any Special Master and that Trump had no right to request such an appointment.
Trump, the DOJ argues, never claimed attorney-client privilege on any of the more than 11,000 documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in August.
“[Trump] has no plausible claim of such a privilege with respect to the records bearing classification markings or any other government documents related to his official duties,” the brief reads.
Trump, who has routinely publicly criticized the FBI, Department of Justice, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, has not yet spoken publicly about the latest appeal.
He has, however, been vocal in his defense of keeping documents related to his presidency at Mar-a-Lago. The DOJ implies Trump had taken classified documents to Florida in violation of federal law. Importantly, the department has not yet filed charges to the effect.
“There is no ‘crime’ having to do with the storage of documents at Mar-a- Lago, only in the minds of the Radical Left Lunatics who are destroying our Country, and were just forced by the Courts to give me back much of what they took (STOLE?) during their unprecedented and unnecessary break in of my home,” Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this week.
Criticism of the DOJ’s investigation has fallen broadly into two camps. The first – typified by Summer Lane of Right Side Broadcasting Network, whose article Trump shared on Truth Social – holds that Trump has behaved similarly to his predecessors.
“Clinton, [George W.] Bush, and Obama were never substantially criticized, severely legally attacked, or questioned for taking documents with them when they left the White House,” Lane writes. “This duplicitous treatment from the Justice Department sadly demonstrates a chilling double standard of political deference that has left Americans’ trust in the U.S. justice system in tatters.”
The other camp accuses the DOJ of playing politics and seeking to influence the 2022 midterm and 2024 presidential elections, a suggestion the Justice Department rejects.
Whatever the truth might be, the investigation is unlikely to factor heavily into the midterms.
Republicans continue to gather steam toward positive results in November and, given the expected weekslong wait for a ruling on the department’s Friday appeal, it’s likely Americans will have cast their ballots or made up their minds on 2022 before anything meaningful emerges from the investigation once it resumes.
The 2024 election cycle would still be in play.