Trump Asks Supreme Court To Include 100 Classified Documents in Special Master's Review

Former United States President Donald Trump has requested for the Supreme Court to intervene in the dispute over materials seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The Republican businessman allegedly asked the high court to include the 100 classified documents in the special master's review. The emergency request is the latest effort by the former president in trying to involve the Supreme Court's justices in investigations that entangle him.

Trump's Request to Supreme Court

If granted, the request could bolster Trump's attempt to challenge the seizure of the classified documents in court. He has repeatedly argued that he may have had a right, as a former president of the United States, to possess certain government documents, including ones that potentially contain the country's most sensitive secrets.

However, Trump is not asking the Supreme Court to block the Justice Department from using the documents in its criminal probe into how the records were mishandled. Justice Clarence Thomas was the recipient of Trump's application and gave the Justice Department a deadline of 5:00 p.m. Tuesday to respond, as per CNN.

It is still unclear whether allowing the special master, who is a third-party attorney responsible for reviewing evidence and filtering out privileged documents, to gain access to classified documents poses a real threat to the probe.

Also, it remains to be seen how sympathetic the high court will be to the former president's claims, which rest largely on technical arguments about whether or not an appeals court had the authority to remove the 100 classified documents from the review.

According to the New York Times, Trump's application said that the 11th Circuit lacked jurisdiction to review the special master order. Even in the chance that the former president wins the case, the victory would be distinctly modest.

Classified Documents

The achievement would simply allow the special master to review those documents even as the Justice Department continues its investigation. While the Supreme Court is dominated by six conservative justices, three of whom were appointed by Trump, it has previously rejected prior efforts to block the disclosure of information about the former president.

A law professor at the University of Texas, Stephen I. Vladeck, said that Trump was pursuing a limited and curious litigation strategy in trying to reinstate part of a ruling from Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the Southern District of Florida.

Vladeck said that Trump's recent application presented "technical procedural questions on which the justices may be even less likely to be sympathetic to the former president."

The situation comes as the special master was chosen to be Judge Raymond J. Dearie of Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The former president's lawyers argued in the filing that the appeals court decision ignored "the District Court's broad discretion without justification."

They added that the unwarranted stay should be removed because it impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the chosen special master. The legal battle began after a search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate where agents discovered roughly 11,000 documents. The search also led the FBI to find 103 documents with a variety of classification markings, the Washington Post reported.