Former US President Donald Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene in the Mar-a-Lago documents-seizure case, saying the special master appointed in the matter should be allowed to review the sensitive materials, The Washington Post reports.
The filing came after a unanimous three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit granted the Justice Department’s request to keep about 100 classified documents separate from the special master’s review.
In the ruling last month, the panel — two judges nominated by Trump and one by President Barack Obama — rejected Trump’s argument that the classified documents seized on August 8 might be his property, rather than the government’s.
The appeals court also blocked an earlier order by US District Judge Aileen M. Cannon that the special master review the documents to see if they should be shielded from investigators because of executive or attorney-client privilege.
Trump’s filing seeks only to reverse the appeals court’s ruling on the special master’s access to the documents, not the part of the decision concerning the investigation.
FBI agents recovered over a hundred classified documents and dozens of empty folders marked classified during the August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, according to unsealed records.
A previous Washington Post report indicated that a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents during the search of Trump’s home.
Trump insists that he declassified the documents in question before leaving office. The former President and his lawyers have publicly insinuated on multiple occasions that the agents who carried out the raid planted evidence during the search.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Yom Kippur in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)