The Justice Department late Tuesday evening told the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that former President Trump failed to show he declassified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
The DOJ’s filing in the 11th Circuit Court was in response to Trump’s lawyers and sought to resume its review of the 100 ‘classified’ documents seized by the FBI in August.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday evening sided with Joe Biden’s corrupt DOJ and lifted the hold barring the DOJ from viewing the classified records.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, previously barred the DOJ from reviewing the seized documents.
“A special master’s review of that subset of about 100 records, which would’ve allowed Trump’s legal team to see them, is now partially stopped. The special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, is able to continue his work reviewing the rest of the material seized from Mar-a-Lago, to make sure records belonging to Trump or that he may be able to claim are confidential aren’t used by investigators.” CNN reported.
“It is self-evident that the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the storage of the classified records did not result in ‘exceptionally grave damage to the national security,'” the three-judge panel from the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. “Ascertaining that necessarily involves reviewing the documents, determining who had access to them and when, and deciding which (if any) sources or methods are compromised.”
The three-judge panel comprised of one Obama appointee and two Trump appointees, blasted Trump’s legal team Wednesday evening.
“Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President,” the judges wrote. “But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified. And before the special master, Plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents.”
In a filing earlier Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers argued that the DOJ has never actually proven the documents it claims are classified are actually classified.
“The District Court denied the Government’s stay request, noting it was not inclined to hastily adopt the Government’s contention that the approximately 100 purportedly “classified” documents were, in fact, classified, and that President Trump could not possibly have a possessory interest in any of them.” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the 40-page filing.
Special Master Raymond Dearie blasted Trump’s lawyers in a preliminary conference in Brooklyn on Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning Judge Dearie repeatedly asked Trump’s lawyers to prove the former president declassified the documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, “You can’t have your cake and eat it,” the judge said according to Politico.
President Trump last month described the declassification process in a statement to John Solomon of Just The News.
“He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified,” Trump’s office said in a statement to Just The News. “The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the President of the United States. The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat, with classification authority delegated BY THE PRESIDENT, needs to approve of declassification is absurd.”
