The former president Trump said that the delay is required to prevent “chaos” and urged a federal appeals court to maintain the interim hold on the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into his alleged misuse of secret data on Tuesday.
The Justice Department’s investigation was briefly put on hold last week by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon while a special master she appointed examined all 11,000 documents taken from Mr. Trump’s home at his exclusive Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The records are being examined by the special master, U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, to see whether there are any that may be exempt from investigation due to executive or attorney-client privilege.
Judge Dearie’s assignment, which has a deadline of November 30, was likewise finished while the probe was put on hold by Judge Cannon.
As Judge Cannon’s limitation prevents the investigation from moving forward while the special master does his duties, the Justice Department argued that the wait is unreasonable and requested the U.S. Court of Appeals to remove it on Friday.
The legal team for Mr. Trump said the postponement was required in a court filing on Tuesday. They blamed the government’s lack of openness. They described the probe as a “dispute over document storage that has gotten out of hand.”
The postponement was described by Mr. Trump’s attorneys as “a prudent first step toward bringing order out of pandemonium.”
Because of this, they wrote, “the District Court found a special master was appropriate and necessary under the circumstances.” “The government’s attempt to shield the allegedly classified documents from the ambit of a Senior United States District Judge who served for seven years on a court dealing with the most sensitive national security matters, therefore, illustrates precisely why the District Court found a special master was appropriate and necessary under the circumstances.”
Additionally, Mr. Trump’s team persisted in asserting that the records collected on August 8 had been declassified but provided no proof of the former president having done so before to leaving office.
The government should infer the records under examination are classified, according to the Justice Department, but Mr. Trump’s attorneys claimed the government has not provided any proof of that.
Trump’s most recent petition urged the court to see the status of the confiscated papers as unclear and reaffirmed his right to declassify data in his capacity as president.
“Once again, the government assumes that the papers it alleges are secret are in fact classified and that their segregation is impermeable. However, this crucial fact has not yet been established by the government, according to the petition.
In appearances with the media, Mr. Trump has frequently asserted that the declassified papers were transferred from his Florida home to his White House. However, his lawyers have made inferences to that effect without making a clear statement.
At a federal courthouse in Brooklyn later on Tuesday, the special master will conduct a preliminary session with Mr. Trump’s legal counsel and attorneys from the Justice Department.
Every day, it is necessary to remind the American people that the 2020 election was rigged, the current members of the Executive are not legal, and the nation is in risk of annihilation. It’s obvious that dumb Joe is not intelligent enough to have accomplished it alone. Consequently, a very strong cabal that has no positive intentions for the nation or its citizens is behind it.
Although presidents have extensive authority to declassify documents, doing so triggers a series of actions from the intelligence agencies that oversee such documents.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts requested information under the Freedom of Information Act in order to get the “standing” declassification order that Trump has cited to justify the volume of records at his residence outside of court filings.
Trump has fought to prevent the Justice Department from looking into the classified records, but the department has asserted that he has no legal claim to them, that they are government property rather than personal property, and that Trump has no justification for preventing the executive branch from looking into them.
