Without comment or any noted dissents, the court issued a one-sentence statement that amounted to a stinging rebuke to the former president.
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Former President Donald J. Trump in Minden, Nev., on Saturday.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a request from former President Donald J. Trump to intervene in the litigation over documents seized from his Florida estate.
The court’s order, which was a sentence long, was a stinging rebuke to Mr. Trump. There were no noted dissents, and the court gave no reasons, saying only: “The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Sept. 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the court is denied.”
Mr. Trump asked the court last week to step into the tangled case, saying that an appeals court had lacked jurisdiction to remove about 100 documents marked as classified from a review of the seized material. The Supreme Court’s action means that the special master in the case, and Mr. Trump’s legal team, will not have access to those documents.
In their filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers did not ask the Supreme Court to overturn a more important part of the appeals court’s ruling, which allowed the Justice Department to continue using the documents with classification markings in its criminal investigation of Mr. Trump’s handling of government records.
Still, subjecting the roughly 100 documents with classification markings to review would have significantly complicated the process because the first step would have been to show the files to Mr. Trump’s lawyers so they could decide whether to claim that any are protected by attorney-client or executive privilege.
Some of the files with those markings are very highly classified — top secret, with further access restrictions for so-called sensitive compartmented information. A government lawyer has questioned whether any of Mr. Trump’s lawyers can be deemed to meet the standards, including a “need to know,” to be shown them.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Chris Kise, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a filing on Tuesday, the Justice Department said the justices should not intervene because the appeals court had the authority to rule on the narrow question at issue in Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court request. The justices apparently agreed.
Last week, the 11th Circuit called for briefs on a relatively brisk schedule on the Justice Department’s broader appeal from a Sept. 5 ruling by Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the Southern District of Florida appointing a special master. That briefing will conclude on Nov. 17, and the appeals court will presumably hear arguments in the following weeks.
In the meantime, the special master appointed by Judge Cannon on Sept. 15, Judge Raymond J. Dearie of Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York, is continuing his work in carrying out Judge Cannon’s instructions to identify documents that may be subject to attorney-client or executive privilege.
The Supreme Court is dominated by six conservative justices, three of them appointed by Mr. Trump. But it has rejected previous efforts to block the disclosure of information about him.
Charlie Savage contributed reporting.
Source: nytimes.com
