Oral arguments in the Department of Justice’s appeal to the appointment of a special master to review documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home have been set for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit set oral arguments for November 22, requiring the DOJ and Trump’s legal team to debate the issue in Atlanta.
The ruling stems from DOJ objection to District Judge Aileen Cannon’s appointment of Judge Raymond Dearie to special master.
Dearie was appointed to review the material the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago in August.
The DOJ argues Cannon’s appointment of a special master as a District Judge is “unprecedented” and restricts the “Executive Branch from reviewing and using evidence.”
The Department made this argument in October before the appeals court granted its requests for a partial stay of Cannon’s order.
October’s partial stay enables the DOJ to assess and investigate the classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
The verdict was a win for the Department as it would have had to provide the special master with 100 documents labeled classified.
Following that win, the DOJ decided to approach the court again to have the appointment of a special master thrown out.
In its second argument, the DOJ asserts that being a district court judge, Cannon has “no general equitable authority to superintend criminal procedures.”
Furthermore, the DOJ argued that in that instance, Cannon made the “extraordinary” ruling granting Trump’s request for relief which would delay the investigation by several months.
