By Oyintari Ben
On Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected former President Donald Trump’s plea to permit a so-called special master to examine sensitive government records that were taken from his Florida home in an FBI raid in August.
As part of his broader assessment of the more than 11,000 federal documents seized at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, the special master was prohibited from looking at the more than 100 classified documents. Trump had requested the court to reverse this recent 11th USCircuit of Appeals order.
The appeals court said that the subset of secret information could only be examined by the Department of Justice, which is looking into whether Trump committed a crime by destroying official papers before he left office in January 2021.
Trump’s appeal had been rejected by the Supreme Court on the advice of the DOJ.
US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that Trump has “no legitimate claims” to the sensitive documents in a court filing on Tuesday.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a stay on September 21, 2022. The application to rescind the stay was filed to Justice [Clarence] Thomas, who referred it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denied the application in its ruling on Thursday.
None of the justices on the Supreme Court expressed dissent in the order.
However, the previous Republican president has a history of dragging out criminal, civil, and governmental investigations using the legal system and the appeals process.
Additionally, he might have anticipated a favourable decision given that he appointed three of the nine judges who are currently serving on the Supreme Court.
