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WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate, escalating a dispute over the powers of an independent arbiter appointed to inspect the records.
The Trump
team asked the justices to overturn a lower court ruling and allow the arbiter,
called a special master, to review the roughly 100 documents with
classification markings that were taken in the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.
A
three-judge panel from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th
Circuit last month limited the special master’s review to the much larger
tranche of non-classified documents. The judges, including two Trump appointees,
sided with the Justice Department, which had argued there was no legal basis
for the special master to conduct his own review of the classified records.
But Trump’s
lawyers said in their application to the Supreme Court that it was essential
for the special master to have access to the classified records to “determine
whether documents bearing classification markings are in fact classified, and
regardless of classification, whether those records are personal records or
Presidential records.”
“Since
President Trump had absolute authority over classification decisions during his
Presidency, the current status of any disputed document cannot possibly be
determined solely by reference to the markings on that document,” the
application states.
It says that
without the special master review, “the unchallenged views of the current
Justice Department would supersede the established authority of the Chief
Executive.” An independent review, the Trump team says, ensures a “transparent
process that provides much-needed oversight.”
The FBI says
it seized roughly 11,000 documents, including about 100 with classification
markings, during its search. The Trump team asked a judge in Florida, Aileen
Cannon, to appoint a special master to do an independent review of the records.
Cannon
subsequently assigned a veteran Brooklyn judge, Raymond Dearie, to review the
records and segregate those that may be protected by claims of attorney-client
privilege and executive privilege. She also barred the FBI from being able to
use the classified documents as part of its criminal investigation.
The Justice
Department appealed, prompting the 11th Circuit to lift Cannon’s hold on
investigators’ ability to scrutinize the classified records. The appeals court
also ruled that the department did not have to provide Dearie with access to
the classified records.
Trump’s
lawyers submitted the Supreme Court application to Justice Clarence Thomas, who
oversees emergency matters from Florida and several other Southern states.
Thomas can act on his own or, as is usually done, refer the emergency appeal to
the rest of the court. Late Tuesday the court said the government was being
asked to respond to the petition by Oct. 11.
Thomas has
previously come under scrutiny for his vote in a different Trump documents
case, in which he was the only member of the court to vote against allowing the
U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to obtain
Trump records held by the National Archives and Records Administration.
Thomas’
wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, is a conservative activist and staunch Trump
supporter who attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse and
wrote to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following
the election encouraging him to work to overturn Biden’s victory and keep Trump
in office. She also contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks
after the election. Thomas was recently interviewed by the House committee
investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection and she stood by the false claim that the
2020 election was fraudulent.
Associated
Press writers Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.
Follow Eric
Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter/etuckerAP