DOJ Asks Supreme Court to Reject Trump Request in FBI Classified Documents Case

The Justice Department (DOJ) asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to reject former President Donald Trump’s bid to have the court intervene in a dispute over documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort two months ago.

The 45th president last week filed an emergency request asking the high court to lift an appeals court decision preventing a special master from reviewing 100 documents that were allegedly marked classified. Those documents were among some 11,000 records that FBI agents seized on Aug. 8.

While urging the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s petition, DOJ officials wrote (pdf) the former president “certainly cannot establish the clear error required to justify the relief he seeks—particularly because he does not acknowledge, much less attempt to rebut, the court of appeals’ conclusion that the district court’s order was a serious and unwarranted intrusion on the Executive Branch’s authority.”

On Aug. 22, Trump filed a petition to restrict the DOJ’s access to the records as it pursues an investigation into whether he retained classified documents after departing the White House in January 2021. A federal judge in Florida sided with Trump’s attorneys and appointed a special master, retired Judge Raymond Deare, to review the documents.

His lawyers previously told the Supreme Court that Dearie should be able to look into the records to see whether the FBI-seized materials “bearing classification markings are in fact classified, and regardless of classification, whether those records are personal records or presidential records.”

Further, they wrote that the DOJ is trying “to criminalize a document management dispute and now vehemently objects to a transparent process that provides much-needed oversight,” his lawyers added.

Justices of the US Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 7, 2022. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

The former president has maintained on social