08 September 2022

DoJ is Appealing

I am not surprised that the Department of Justice is appealing the judge's order for a special master.

It's actually likely to be faster just to accede to the special master, but with a ruling this completely incoherent and arbitrary, they clearly feel the need to slap it down, so some other Federalist Society puke does not try it again.

Also, there would be a good chance that U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon would appoint soomeone worse than Rudy Giuliani as a special master.*

If they did not do this, every corrupt judge on the bench, and Donald, and Mitch, and George appointed a lot of them, would be obstructing justice from the bench:

Federal prosecutors on Thursday asked a judge to restore their access to classified material seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, saying their ongoing criminal probe needs to determine if there are sensitive government papers that have not been found yet, and signaling that they plan to appeal the issue to a higher court in the interests of national security.

Justice Department lawyers told U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon that if she does not grant them their requested stay by Sept. 15, they would file their appeal in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Cannon on Monday granted a request from Trump to appoint a special master to review the seized documents, telling prosecutors they could not use the material until it was reviewed. Her decision slowed — at least temporarily — the Justice Department’s high-profile investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information held at the former president’s Florida residence and club, as well as the possible hiding, tampering or destruction of government records.

………

In separate court filings Thursday, prosecutors signaled their intent to appeal Cannon’s order and asked her to temporarily suspend two key parts of it: her decision that both classified and unclassified documents should be reviewed by the special master, and that FBI agents and prosecutors may not access even the classified documents for their criminal probe until that review is complete.

………

But prosecutors argued that Cannon should prohibit the special master from reviewing classified documents — and should restore investigators’ access to those documents right away. The special master would be still able to sort through personal documents and other items the FBI also seized, setting aside materials as necessary, the filing says.

Barring the FBI from using the classified material in the investigation, even temporarily, “could impede efforts to identify the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored — which itself presents the potential for ongoing risk to national security,” prosecutors wrote.

It was the first time they have suggested in court filings that there could be more unsecured classified material the government has yet to locate.

The DoJ is strongly implying that they see the judges ruling as being detrimental to the security of the United States.

I do not expect it to change the judge's mind.  Corruption is her primary judicial philosophy.

………

Allowing a special master to review the classified material would “cause the most immediate and serious harms to the government and the public,” prosecutors wrote in their filing, noting that those seized documents have already been moved to a secure facility, separate from the rest of the seized Trump papers.

FBI Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler submitted a declaration saying that Cannon’s prohibition on investigators using the seized classified material could prevent them from understanding what may have happened to the significant number of empty folders found with classified markings.

The existence of those empty folders was made public last week, when a more detailed list of what the FBI took in the search was unsealed.

The FBI’s investigation, Kohler wrote, “could be instrumental in determining what materials may once have been stored in those folders and whether they may have been lost or compromised.”
They are arguing clear and present danger here.

………

In her original ruling, Cannon said that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence could continue its analysis of the possible risk to national security posed by the removal from government custody of classified documents, some of which contain the government’s most sensitive intelligence-gathering secrets.

The FBI being the FBI, my guess is that someone is already on the phone to the DNI asking for some agents to be temporarily assigned to his office.  This is the kind of rat-f%$#ery that they have been doing since the days of J. Edgar Hoover.

………

But Justice Department lawyers said Thursday said that it is difficult to separate the FBI investigation from the intelligence review. They said they were unsure of the “bounds” and “implications” of the court order, and their uncertainty had forced the intelligence community to temporarily halt its review of the classified material even though the judge said that review could proceed.

The DoJ is definitely waving the bloody shirt here.

Their arguments sound a lot like the ones used to preserve the (created by a lie) State Secrets Privilege.

*I just threw up in my mouth a little.

0 comments :

Post a Comment