A crosswalk signal is seen outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, June 27, 2022.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to reject former President Donald Trump‘s request that it allow the special master reviewing documents seized by federal agents from Mar-a-Lago to have access to those marked as classified.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in court papers that the underlying dispute involves an “unprecedented” attempt to restrict the government’s use of its own classified documents. Trump cannot show that he would suffer “irreparable injury” if the documents are withheld from the special master, she added.
Whatever the court decides in weighing Trump‘s relatively narrow request, it will not affect the Justice Department’s access to the same documents in its criminal investigation. The more than 100 classified documents are just a small portion of the 11,000 records seized by federal agents amid concerns that Trump had unlawfully retained official White House records after leaving office.
The high court is reviewing a Sept. 21 decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that barred the special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, from reviewing the documents. Trump had not contested a separate part of the ruling that allowed the Justice Department to use the documents.
A decision by the Supreme Court is due at any time.
Trump’s lawyers had said the appeal’s court’s decision to block access to the special master “impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the special master.” They added that “any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a president’s home erodes public confidence in our system of justice.”
The appeals court said certain documents are deemed classified because they contain information that could harm national security, and for that reason people may have access to them only if they need to know that information.
Trump sued the government after the August search of his Mar-a-Lago residence, seeking to prevent the government from using them as part of a criminal investigation and asking for the appointment of a special master to review the documents.
Under federal law, official White House records are federal property and must be handed over to the National Archives when the president leaves office. Trump says he did nothing improper and wants Dearie to determine the status of the documents, including those marked as classified.
Although the Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, including three justices he appointed, Trump has not recently fared well in other emergency applications, including his attempt to prevent White House documents from being handed over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and his bid to avoid disclosure of his financial records to prosecutors in New York.