By Steve Neavling
The Justice Department scored a victory in its investigation of classified material that former President Trump took home to Mar-a-Lago after he left office.
The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department can resume using the material in its probe of Trump’s document handling.
The Justice Department had appealed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that temporarily prevented investigators from continuing to use the documents. Cannon, a Trump appointee, had paused the review pending a review by an independent arbiter at the request of Trump’s team.
The Justice Department “argues that the district court likely erred in exercising its jurisdiction to enjoin the United States’ use of the classified records in its criminal investigation and to require the United States to submit the marked classified documents to a special master for review,” a three-judge panel of the appeals court wrote, according to The New York Times. “We agree.”
Trump made the bizarre claim in an interview that aired late Wednesday that he could declassify documents by just saying so.
“You can declassify just by saying ‘it’s declassified,’ even by thinking about it,” Mr. Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News.
