A federal appeals court on Wednesday agreed to expedite a Department of Justice (DOJ) appeal that appoints a special master to examine thousands of government documents confiscated from former President Trump’s Florida home.
A one-page US Court of Appeals order for the 11th Circuit sets an aggressive timeline for the case, ordering several rounds of paper documents from the Department of Justice and Trump to end on November 1.
An Atlanta-based appeals court previously granted the DOJ an interim victory in the case, agreeing to partially block a judge’s order that would have prevented federal investigators from reviewing 100 confidential documents that had been killed in Trump’s hands. in August. Among the records taken by -a-Lago were. Habitat.
In a related development on Tuesday, Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn the provisional 11th Circuit ruling as the appeal unfolded. Government response to judges on Tuesday.
An investigation into a possible misappropriation of Trump’s highly sensitive government information has been mired in procedural disputes since the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Palm Beach residence in early August.
In September, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida granted the former president’s request to appoint a third party, known as a special master, to determine whether the warrant to confiscate the material exceeds the scope or contains information subject to the attorney. customer or executive privileges. .
U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon, the judge presiding over Trump’s request, also ordered federal agents to suspend investigations into the confiscated documents to allow the Special Master’s work – his orders – to continue. Part of this was later blocked by the 11th circuit. The formal appeal from the Department of Justice continues.
Judge Raymond Deary, who was selected for the role of special teacher after being suggested by Trump, has begun preliminary work to review the nearly 11,000 government documents – some 200,000 pages in total – seized in the research that may have not been bearing. classification marks.
Trump said that even as a former president, executive privilege allowed him to keep some documents filed in his home. The government has said that all documents created as an executive are presidential documents and should be kept in the national archives.
Rebecca Beitsch contributed. Updated at 2:29 pm