This may have been Trump’s worst single court day ever.
Within one day of receiving Trump’s legal team’s brief, the 11th Circuit ruled that Trump’s hand-picked judge, U.S. District Judge Cannon was wrong in ruling that the DOJ couldn’t continue its criminal investigation instigated by the documents themselves. The DOJ made it clear that they couldn’t possibly complete a national security review while also halting the criminal investigation, nor would it be safe to stop the criminal investigation. The 11th Circuit didn’t need many hours to agree. The judges unanimously agreed to lift the stay even thought two of the three judges on the panel were Trump-appointed judges. From the AP [1]:
The panel ruled that Cannon, a Trump appointee, erred when she temporarily prevented federal prosecutors from using the roughly 100 documents — marked as classified – recovered from Trump’s estate as part of a criminal inquiry.
Trump “has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the panel ruled in a 29-page [2] decision. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents.”
Two of the three judges on the panel, Andrew Brasher and Britt Grant, were appointed to the court by Trump. The third, Robin Rosenbaum, was appointed by President Barack Obama. In the unanimous decision, the judges declared it “self-evident” that the public interest favored allowing the Justice Department to determine whether any of the records were improperly disclosed, risking national security damage.
It is self-evident that top-secret SCI documents that regard a nuclear power’s defenses and nuclear posture do not belong in a desk at a country club. It doesn’t matter who owns that club.
The staff at this site remain firmly of the belief that the case regarding Trump’s files continues to be the single most dangerous criminal case he may face if charged.
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[email protected], @JasonMiciak, with Nicole Hickman