Supreme Court Denies Trump Application To Vacate 11th Circuit Order On Documents Marked Classified
Not unexpected, but of course being celebrated as a smack down of Trump. Does this mean SCOTUS is legitimate again?
The Supreme Court, in a single sentence decision without any noted dissents, denied Trump’s request to vacate an 11th Circuit ruling that reversed one part of the District Court Order appointing a Special Master. That part of the District Court order prohibited the feds from continuing to use the documents marked “classified” that were seized during the Mar-a-Lago Raid pending review by the Special Master.
The rest of the Order appointing the Special Master remains in place pending a separate appeal by the feds to the 11th Circuit. The 11th Circuit ruling had gone out of its way to point out it was limited and did not involve the ultimate merits. From the 11th Circuit Opinion (emphasis added):
Following the execution of a search warrant at the residence of Plaintiff-Appellee, former President Donald J. Trump, Plaintiff moved for the appointment of a special master to review the documents that Defendant-Appellant United States of America seized. The district court granted that motion in substantial part. Now, the United States moves for a partial stay of the district court’s order as it relates to the roughly one-hundred documents bearing classification markings. We decide only the narrow question presented: whether the United States has established that it is entitled to a stay of the district court’s order, to the extent that it (1) requires the government to submit for the special master’s review the documents with classification markings and (2) enjoins the United States from using that subset of documents in a criminal investigation. We conclude that it has.
We stress the limited nature of our review: this matter comes to us on a motion for a partial stay pending appeal. We cannot (and do not) decide the merits of this case. We decide only the traditional equitable considerations, including whether the United States has shown a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits, the harm each party might suffer from a stay, and where the public interest lies.
For the reasons we explain below, we grant the United States’s motion for a partial stay pending appeal.
We covered the application in Trump Files Emergency Supreme Court Application To Vacate 11th Circuit Order On Documents Marked Classified.
The SCOTUS Order provided:
The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on September 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied.
This was the most likely outcome all along. It’s a tall burden to get a SCOTUS stay, particularly on what amounts to a procedural issue being handled by the lower courts.
Nonetheless, the NY Times sub-headlined it’s report that it was a “stinging rebuke” to Trump:
Without comment or any noted dissents, the court issued a one-sentence statement that amounted to a stinging rebuke to the former president.
Does this mean SCOTUS is legitimate again?
#TheResistance Twitter Lawyers have decided to call a one-day ceasefire:
And . . . the Supreme Court REJECTS Trump’s plea to intervene in special master case. Justice is trending.
— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) October 13, 2022
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Comments
Our farcical judicial system continues to reveal itself.
Without reading the pleadings, etc., just on the appearances of it, I’m very surprised.
At what point do justices say, “Enough with the persecution of this one man.”?
The justices are out of touch. Americans see all these persecutions of Trump and MAGA, and everything they thought was above board — including medical workers — is now revealed to be corrupt to the core.
No, this decision is bad for the country. Anything that let’s Joe Biden’s handlers continue to pile on, is bad for the country.
Speaking of which, does anyone here know why no habeas corpus actions have been brought on behalf of the J6s still imprisoned before trial? No bond, etc?
There’s nothing surprising about it. It was the right decision. Having the Supreme Court override the stay granted pending the government’s appeal would require extraordinary evidence and there just wasn’t any. We’ll have to see what happens on the appeal in the 11th circuit.
Well, besides the fact that;
1. There was no legal basis for the raid in the first place. The FBI and DOJ try to rely on general inapplicable statutes instead of the specific controlling rule. To wit, the PRA.
2. The PRA does not contrain criminal sanction provisions. Thus, the DOJ contentions about a “criminal investigation” are absolutely preposterous.
A non-lawyer poke at this: There are enough redacted lines in the warrant to squeeze in a criminal charge to justify the warrant without the PRA being involved. That would mean the FBI was tasked to do a two-reason raid. 1-Grabbing evidence for a criminal trial, and 2-Grabbing things the Nat.Archives wrongly thinks should be theirs, a little like raiding a restaurant for being an illegal numbers racket and grabbing a few dozen pizzas for the guys back at the station.
Like I said, just a guess.
None of that justifies overturning the stay. The special master has nothing to do with any of that. His only function is to examine the documents seized and decide whether any of them are privileged. The 11th circuit ruled that these 100 documents can’t possibly be privileged, so there’s nothing for the special master to decide about them, and the government is entitled to continue using them to build whatever case it might try to build. That doesn’t mean it will succeed.
Why can’t the documents be privileged? Wouldn’t someone have to look at them to determine that, or does the DNC now control what is privileged?
There’s nothing surprising about it. It was the right decision. Having the Supreme Court override the stay granted pending the government’s appeal would require extraordinary evidence and there just wasn’t any. We’ll have to see what happens on the appeal in the 11th circuit.
What are you talking about here? Of course habeas motions have been brought for all of them, long long ago. Any of them who are still in custody are so pursuant to a judge’s decision that custody is justified, just like any other prisoner. That’s how it works. I don’t understand why you think this hasn’t happened. The judges’ decision in any given case might be incorrect, just as it can be in any other case, but how can you think there was no decision, and they’re just being held illegally? Where could you have got such an impression?
First Jan. 6 Defendant Files Habeas Corpus Petition
5 months ago https://americanews.news/first-jan-6-defendant-files-habeas-corpus-petition-13126.html
I am not going to sign up for an account, but the petition was filed over failure to provide medical treatment, and the petition was granted. The defendant is under home confinement. I see no record of other petitions filed.
He was the first to file challenging the specific conditions under which he was being held. Not the fact that he was being held. And the reason neither he nor anyone else has challenged that is that they all got their habeas rights, just like any other prisoner. They were all brought before a judge within the statutory time of their arrest, and got an individualized decision on whether they should get bail. Some of those decisions were undoubtedly wrong, but they were made.
What about their rights to “speedy trials”?
Brittney Griner got a speedier trial in Russia.
So which is it, Mihouse. They all filed habeas actions as you said before, or none of them did because none of them had a basis.
Geeze.
Same Democrat judges who have been citing that they need the book thrown at them for insurrection WHEN THEY HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED WITH INSURRECTION!!!!
Your defending judges who have been actively partisan is taking institutionalism from being a political belief to a religious one.
Yes most of the judges handling these cases have been abominable and have not been applying law blindly.
Milhouse, almost without fail you’re a supercilious jerk.
Not only that, but you worship at the alter of LAW-ITIS. Though I be a lawyer, I can see the pockmarked face of LAW-ITIS from Afar.
You, on the other hand, worship at Law-Itis’s altar.
You just make things up.
Sure. So show me all the habeas petitions you claimed were filed. I’ll wait.
You have me tempted to log in to Pacer and check each and every case.
More classic Milhouse- find a way to support leftist malfeasance and pretend it’s legitimate.
Typical kangaroo court.
This isn’t a rulling on the merits of the case only on if the stay the government got will be dismissed during the appeals process; the professor highlighted the part that made it clear this is not a final rulling.
Supreme Court doesn’t usually get involved while the lower courts haven’t ruled yet, and that is all this ruling affirms.
So as of right now nothing changed, there is no ruling and the appeals are ongoing.
And also required them to submit those documents to the special master so he could decide whether any privilege applied to them. The stay means they don’t have to give him any access to those documents, because there is no possible privilege that he might find covers them.
So the DC gets to review them, I presume, but the SM doesn’t? Isn’t that the point of the SM to determine the privilege status of the documents?
Remember again, every supposed ‘secret’ document Trump had at MAL was a *copy* of a document under present government control. It’s a bit of a non-sequitur (See, I used Latin! I is smart) to put document 145c2 into a sealed box and tell the DOJ they can’t look at it when the DOJ can just open up document 145c1 from the files.
The obvious objective of the DOJ is to prevent *anybody* from looking at these documents, even the former FISA judge they have approved of as special master. Why? My personal theory is that the FBI believes if they grab every copy of the Crossfire Hurricane documents (and others like that) and chant “Nothing to see, all classified, go away” loud enough, the media and the courts will go along with it. Of course that presumes there will be no trial where they would be introduced as evidence, because that would blow up in their faces. Again.
That’s what I was saying: the DOJ gets to unilaterally decide the applicability of the documents, even with their overwhelming bias?
There are supposedly 17 species of weasel, but looking at the above photograph I must add an eighteenth- The Pucker-mouthed Garland Ferret.
That’s Merrick Himmler, the leader of the American Gestapo.
So OF COURSE, the feds are now “investigating” Elon Musk over his Twitter deal….
This is what happens when SCOTUS doesn’t smack down overreach. They KEEP overreaching.
Too bad, Elon… that’s a nice set of companies you have there.
They sure don’t want twit to allow free speech.
What say you, Milhouse?
Disgusting Court
Cowards all
Okay, folks this is simply an atrocious outcome.
At some point, and I think we’re at that point if not past it, if the institutions that are supposed to protect us completely fail to do so, and either the process and/or the outcome is the punishment, then we are really out of options.
This decision is the biggest chicken s thing I’ve seen along the way in this whole mess, perhaps nearly rivaled by the Sessions recusal as AG.
Because of the special status of the president and the reasonable arguments Trump’s lawyers made, whether they were perfectly right or not, the court had every justification and every reason to say kick this back down to the district Court, let the district court make the decisions, get the Circuit Court out of these intermediate decisions . But that they let an intermediate ruling from the circuit, which is the kind of intervention they’re trying to Signal against, if that’s their reason, makes no sense and just allows the continued harassment of all of us.
Divorce is the only logical next step.,
Of course we lost Roberts, but I’m not sure who the other one who was a coward is. I’m sure Thomas is livid.
I know I’m livid. And I don’t even care about the hyper-particularities of not intervening or intervening or abuse of discretion or not abuse of discretion, at some point there has to be a backstop and there isn’t one. There wasn’t one for the election claims, there hasn’t been one for Trump anywhere along the way. There hasn’t been one for January 6 protesters who never did anything violent and didn’t enter the capital. There isn’t for peaceful anti-abortion protesters. There isn’t for Roger Stone. There isn’t for Paul manafort. There isn’t for George Papadopoulos. I could go on and on and on. If you’re not crazy angry at this outcome right now then you just must not understand what’s going on. It’s bad, it’s very bad.
I read somewhere it was Unanimous. Perplexing.
Im assuming the Conservative Judges were all “we must do the right thing and let the process play out so we dont appear biased” while the Democrat Judges were all “fuck it, he’s sooooo guilty we dont even need a trial”.
I have not read that, though I don’t doubt any scenario.
I would appreciate if you have that link handy, if you would reply here with it.
Thank you,
NYT. Don’t know if it’s behind a paywall.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/us/politics/trump-supreme-court.html
Here is the actual order. It’s bare as can be.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/101322zr_2d8f.pdf
It’s worse than you describe. Cannon looked around like a good judge should. See saw the FBI/DOJ lie about the Steele dossier. Lie about Danchenko. Lie about Page not working with the CIA. There are other lies I’m missing. She saw McCabe lie. Comey lie. Comey leak classified docs and not get punished. She saw all the lies from the DOJ/FBI and no one get punished.
Then she said to herself: “The Judiciary is a co-equal branch to the Executive. We don’t have to take the Executive’s word for anything. If we have suspicions – and we have very strong suspicions – the Executive is lying – we have the ability, we have the duty to check the Executive and verify they are telling the truth.
This is Cannon’s decision and Cannon’s decision alone. That is Trump’s argument. Cannon could decide to trust the DOJ or verify the DOJ. It’s her decision. The circuit court may have made a different decision. So what? It’s not their decision to make.
If Cannon made in error in law, then the circuit court could overrule her. But she didn’t make an error in law, she made a decision under the authority she had as a district judge. That decision is unappealable. Supposedly. But we no longer live under the rule of law. We live under the rule of man.
Cannon sees the DOJ let’s friends of the Democratic party take and destroy classified docs and docs under subpoena with impunity. But will go after the enemies of the Democratic party for the smallest of offenses. She sees the Executive cannot be trusted and wants them to prove what they say.
SCOTUS should stand for the rule of law. SCOTUS should stand for the authority of the district judge. SCOTUS should stand for holding the Executive accountable. But they won’t. They have signaled that they will bow to the power of the deep state. They have signaled that the Judicial branch is not a co-equal branch of government. They have signaled the Judicial branch is a subservient branch of the deeps state.
You are correct PuttingOnItsShoes. It’s time for a divorce.
Is “amounts to” the new “to the effect of”?