Appeals Court Rules Against Trump, DOJ Can Continue Reviewing Seized Mar-a-Lago Docs

The Department of Justice can resume reviewing documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s home following a ruling from an appellate court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled late Wednesday evening the DOJ can continue its investigation of classified materials seized from Mar-a-Lago during an Aug. 8 FBI raid.

Judge Aileen Cannon had ruled the government must stop its review of the documents after she previously agreed to appoint a special master to act as a neutral third party to review the materials. The DOJ appealed the order to stop examining the documents.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper welcomed network justice correspondent Jessica Schneider to break the news during AC360. She reported the decision by the court was unanimous:

This is exactly what the Justice Department has been fighting for weeks. They tried to get this result in the district court from judge Aileen Canon. They didn’t get it. Now they’ve had the victory from the 11th Circuit. Notably, this is from a panel of two judges, two of them Trump appointees, one Obama appointee.

And what the 11th Circuit is saying tonight the justice department can go back to using the classified documents they’d been restricted from using in their ongoing criminal probe into these classified documents that were seized from Mar-a-Lago last month.

Schneider said the appellate judges agreed with the Department of Justice that its probe of the documents is consequential to national security.

“And notably in this opinion as well, Anderson, the 11th Circuit is really faulting Trump’s lawyers for not better explaining what seems to be their argument Trump declassified some of these documents. Because remember, Trump has repeatedly said this in public – as have his lawyers.

Watch above, via CNN.