Atlanta
CNN
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A panel of federal appeals court judges – all appointed by Republican presidents – on Tuesday were dubious of former President Donald Trump’s arguments for why the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago required a special master to review the materials that were seized.
During 40 minutes of oral arguments at the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, the three-judge panel posed several skeptical questions for the Trump team, suggesting they were not convinced that Trump had shown that an “extraordinary” judicial intervention into the investigation was necessary.
The move by a Florida-based judge to appoint a third party to help decide what of the roughly 22,000 pages of materials obtained in the search belongs in the hands of investigators had thrown a significant wrench in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into whether records from Trump’s White House were mishandled.
“Other than the fact that this involves a former president, everything else about this … is indistinguishable,” Judge William Pryor, the chief judge of the appellate court, told Trump lawyer James Trusty during the arguments.
“We’ve gotta be concerned about the precedent that we would create that would allow any target of offense of a federal criminal investigation to go into district court and to have a district court entertain this kind of petition, exercise equitable jurisdiction (that allows a court to intervene) and interfere with the executive branch’s ongoing investigation,” Pryor said.
Trump’s argument that the DOJ’s work could violate his constitutional rights is the foundation of why a trial-level judge put on hold parts of the Justice Department’s investigation and appointed a third-party “special master” to sort through thousands of documents that were seized to determine which should be off limits to investigators.
On the panel, Pryor, an appointee of George W. Bush, was most direct to say he disagreed with Trump’s reasoning. Two other judges on the panel, Britt Grant and Andrew Basher, both Trump appointees, previously hinted in a ruling related to the case that they believed the trial-level judge had overreached.
Trusty argued to the court on Tuesday the search and seizure might have violated the former president’s rights, saying the FBI took golf shirts and Celine Dion pictures from the beach home and resort along with documents marked as classified.
The judges pushed back against his characterizations.
“The problem is you know, the search warrant was for classified documents, and boxes, and other items that are intermingled with that. I don’t think it’s necessarily the fault of the government if someone has intermingled classified documents and all kinds of other personal property,” Pryor told Trusty during the arguments.
In a separate exchange, Grant cut Trusty off when he called the August search at Mar-a-Lago a “raid.”
“Do you think a raid is the right term for the execution of a warrant?” Grant asked.
Trusty then apologized for using the “loaded term.”
Prosecutors are examining whether there was obstruction of justice, criminal handling of government records, and violations of the Espionage Act, which prohibits unauthorized storage of national defense information.
The Justice Department has already won a carveout from the 11th Circuit allowing it to continue its investigation into the documents marked as classified.
Now, the Justice Department is asking to throw out the entirety of the special master review, which is being led by Raymond Dearie.
An appeals court decision that got rid of the special master review of the Mar-a-Lago documents would supercharge the pace of…
Read More: Mar-a-Lago documents: Appeals court is dubious of Trump’s arguments for special master review