Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has given the Biden administration until early next week to respond to a legal filing from former President Donald Trump asking that a special master assigned to the case be allowed to review dozens of documents seized in the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump filed an emergency request with the court on Tuesday, prompting Thomas to seek a response from the Biden administration’s Department of Justice.
As noted by Axios, Thomas was the justice responding because he is designated to oversee emergency appeals from the 11th Circuit.
Last month, Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida appointed retired federal Judge Raymond Dearie as a special master to review documents seized in the Aug. 8 raid, banned the Justice Department from using those in any investigation until that review is completed, and said all documents seized — including those marked classified — should be reviewed by Trump’s attorneys.
The Justice Department appealed the parts of the order that covered a ban on using the documents and sharing what it says are 100 classified documents with Trump’s attorneys.
An order from a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the DOJ a total victory, saying it could use documents seized in its raid on Mar-a-Lago as it investigates the former president.
The ruling also meant the Justice Department could keep Trump’s attorneys in the dark about the contents of documents that are marked classified during a review of the seized documents by the special master.
Trump’s emergency appeal said the appellate court went beyond its jurisdiction in keeping documents from his lawyers.
“Indeed, all that was before the Eleventh Circuit was the Injunction Order, which contained only the District Court’s statement of prospective intent regarding the appointment of a special master, but specifically did not set forth the Special Master’s duties and scope of review,” the filing from his attorneys said.
The filing said the appellate order is effectively compromising the integrity of the well-established policy against piecemeal appellate review and ignoring the district court’s broad discretion without justification.
“Moreover, any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a President’s home erodes public confidence in our system of justice,” Trump’s lawyers argued.
“The unprecedented circumstances presented by this case — an investigation of the 45th president of the United States by the administration of his political rival and successor — compelled the district court to acknowledge the significant need for enhanced vigilance and to order the appointment of a special master to ensure fairness, transparency and maintenance of the public trust,” the filing said.
In its reporting, Politico noted how the filing fits with Trump’s strategy.
Allowing a full review of the 100 documents marked classified “would make it easier for Trump to continue to pursue claims that those documents — some marked ‘Top Secret,’ or with even more restrictive classifications — should not be in the hands of Justice Department investigators because they are subject to executive privilege, because Trump declassified them before leaving office, or for other reasons,” the outlet said Tuesday.
Although Trump has said he declassified the documents, attorneys so far have not produced documents saying that he did so.
In its ruling last month that prompted Trump’s appeal, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals touched on the issue.
“Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President. But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified. And before the special master, Plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents,” the ruling said.
The appeals court said that “at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal. So even if we assumed that Plaintiff did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.”
Thomas asked that the DOJ respond to Trump’s emergency request by 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.
I get the feeling that the great Stone Head (Thomas) is going to continue to interfere with any case that has to do with his personal feelings. He has no reasonable basis for not recusing himself from anything to do with religion, Trump, Jan 6 and the list goes on of issues he involves himself in because of his personal and religious feelings. He has found he’s been there long enough he can be as outrageously personal about issues as he wants and nobody with any power can force him off a case or even demand he explain himself in reasonable terms.
Most of what he does is so far off the Constitution that the only way he can explain it without just saying that’s the way I feel about it is by claiming he’s an “originalist”. WTH is an “originalist”. The definition I’ve found so far for a Constitutional originalist is someone who doesn’t quite like how the Constitution reads and so he ducks into the Federalist papers and discussions of issues today with his Federalist buddies and as a result, he comes up with ideas from esoteric thought pieces of how it ought to be.
What we get in the way of interpretation today is not what’s in the Constitution per se, but what he and his four minions (the handmaiden, the snot-nosed Jesus freak, high school Harry and the Environmental attack dog) seem to be doing is grabbing their Ouija board and channeling the founders to get their thoughts
The problem is the founders’ thoughts were discussed and those deemed worthy were included in the Constitution and the first ten Amendments. Some things require interpretation of the Constitution, but don’t require restriction unless they conflict with the Constitution.
There is no basis whatsoever for ignoring Amendment 9. It’s in the Constitution and Thomas’ channeling of the founders and picking their brains for what he wants is a crime against the people and their Constitution.
What the people think is not channeled but the founders are, at least some of them seem to say things not specifically in the Constitution, but they talked about it or thought about it.
Anyone denying rights to the people is being unfaithful to the Constitution and Thomas and his minions have denied rights of the people as provided for in Amendment 9.
GOD BLESS THOMAS
ONLY LUCID BRAIN IN THIS COURT
An Observation – Every day some media schmuck accuses Conservatives of being racist, when our two heroes are Thomas Sowell and Justice Thomas.
They have been on a witch hunt with President Trump since the first day he walked into office. Plain as day….real tired of watching this attack…if they can attack a sitting President then a retired president what can they do to us?????the Demonicraps and Rethuglicans are clearly out of control…..this is a third world country….time to take back our country….every day this goes unchecked….everyday the Biden regime stays in office the more dangerously close we stand to lose our country…something needs to be done ASAP…PRAY TO GOD FOR STARTERS.
Just one word describe donkeycraps. NAZI’S