Supreme Court Directs Department of Justice to Respond to Trump Request

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas poses for the official group photograph at the U.S. Supreme Court in the District of Columbia on Nov. 30, 2018. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The Supreme Court has told the Department of Justice (DOJ) to enter a response to former President Donald Trump after he asked the nation’s top court to vacate a partial stay against him in the Mar-a-Lago records case.

Justice Clarence Thomas directed DOJ lawyers to respond to Trump by 5 p.m. on Oct. 11.

Trump asked the Supreme Court to vacate a partial stay entered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The partial stay blocked U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, who is serving as a special master in the case, and Trump’s lawyers from viewing the records with classified markings that were seized by FBI agents from Trump’s Florida home in August. The ruling also enabled the government to resume using those records in its criminal investigation of Trump.

The application to the Supreme Court argued that the first part of the order was improper because special master appointments aren’t appealable. It asked the court to act swiftly.

“This unwarranted stay should be vacated as it impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the Special Master. Moreover, 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,” Trump’s attorneys said.

They aren’t asking justices to rule against the other part of the appeals court order.

Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, received the application because he oversees the 11th Circuit.

Each justice oversees one or more circuit courts. They have the authority to reject applications, grant them, or refer them to the full court for consideration.

For now, Dearie remains prevented from seeing the materials with classified markings.

Trump lawyers have already been reviewing some of the other documents taken by agents from Mar-a-Lago. They and the government were recently told by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, to reach a contract by no later than Oct. 5 with a vendor who will scan the documents and make them available in electronic form for parties to review.

After the attorneys review the documents and list which ones they believe are protected by privilege, Dearie will go over the assertions and recommend them to Cannon by Dec. 17.

Trump has said that some of the materials are protected by attorney-client privilege and other forms of privilege, such as executive privilege. The government has said that most of the documents aren’t protected and that Trump can’t claim executive privilege because he’s no longer in office.

The Supreme Court rejected a request earlier in the week in a different case to review the protocols of DOJ “filter teams,” which are inserted into sensitive cases to review seized documents and sift out those that may be protected by privilege.

The justices didn’t say why they rejected the request.