The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it will appeal a judge’s decision to appoint a special master to review materials seized by the FBI from former president Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
The DOJ is also requesting a partial stay of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order, which granted Trump’s request for a special master and paused the use of the seized materials for the department’s criminal investigation. The order allowed the intelligence community’s assessment of classified documents to continue, but the government has said that it has put that process on hold as well.
“The injunction against using classified records in the criminal investigation could impede efforts to identify the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored – which itself presents the potential for ongoing risk to national security,” argued the DOJ in a filing on Thursday.
“The application of the injunction to classified records would thus frustrate the government’s ability to conduct an effective national security risk assessment and classification review and could preclude the government from taking necessary remedial steps in light of that review — risking irreparable harm to our national security and intelligence interests,” government lawyers wrote.
Law enforcement is investigating former president Donald Trump for removal or destruction of records, obstruction of an investigation, and violating the Espionage Act, according to the search warrant authorities used to access Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.
Prosecutors said if the judge does not grant their request for a partial stay by September 15, they will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to intervene.
Cannon’s Monday order said that the special master’s review will include materials covered by executive privilege.
Cannon has instructed the DOJ and Trump’s lawyers to file legal briefs laying out their proposed candidates to serve as special master, along with recommendations for how the review should proceed.
Trump’s legal team has argued that a third-party review is necessary because the search of his property “involved political calculations aimed at diminishing the leading voice in the Republican Party, President Trump.”
Bill Barr, who served as attorney general during the Trump administration, has called Cannon’s ruling “deeply flawed.”
“The opinion was wrong, and I think the government should appeal it,” Barr said on Fox News on Tuesday. “It’s deeply flawed in a number of ways. I don’t think the appointment of a special master is going to hold up, but even if it does, I don’t see it fundamentally changing the [case’s] trajectory.”
Barr said one day later that the Justice Department appears to be “getting very close” to having sufficient evidence to indict Trump.