The U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a setback to the Trump legal team’s motion for the high court to intervene in the legal fight over the ‘classified’ documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago on August 8.
The Supreme Court rejected former President Donald Trump’s legal request that the justices reverse a federal appeals court and allow a special master to review approximately 100 documents marked classified.
SCOTUS intervention could have made it possible for Trump’s legal team to review the records and declare certain ‘privileged’ documents off limits to prosecutors during a criminal case. However, the Supreme Court slammed that door shut on Thursday.
The Supreme Court’s statement was brief:
“The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented by Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied,” it read.
Judge Aileen Cannon, however, earlier extended the deadlines for Donald Trump in the case until after the 2022 midterm elections.
“No later than October 14, 2022, Defendant shall file a Notice of Completion on the docket certifying that it has made available to Plaintiff all of the Seized Materials as set forth above,” the ruling stated. “No later than twenty-one (21) calendar days after the receipt of Defendant’s Notice of Completion, Plaintiff shall provide the Special Master and Defendant with one comprehensive, annotated copy of the spreadsheet described above that specifies, for each document, whether Plaintiff asserts any of the following”:
a. Attorney-client communication privilege;
b. Attorney work product privilege;
c. Executive Privilege;
d. Presidential Record within the meaning of the Presidential Records Act; and
e. Personal record within the meaning of the Presidential Records Act.
“Plaintiff’s designations shall be on a document-by-document basis,” Judge Cannon continued. “For any document that Plaintiff designates as privileged and/or personal, Plaintiff shall include a statement adequately explaining the precise basis for the designation, including, as relevant to any possible assertions of executive privilege, a sufficient description of the rationale and scope of the assertion from which to evaluate the merits of the assertion.”
Judge Cannon’s order made it clear that no determination about the allegedly classified documents would be made until well after the 2022 midterms, drawing the ire of Democratic Party loyalists who had hoped that the case would impact the election.
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