Supreme Court rejects Trump’s request for intervention in Mar-a-Lago case

The Supreme Court on Thursday denied Donald Trump’s request that it intervene in the legal battle over documents seized from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Trump’s request was submitted to the nation’s highest court on Oct. 4, two week after the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit gave federal investigators the greenlight to continue using about 100 classified files uncovered at Mar-a-Lago.

The appeals court’s decision also froze an independent arbiter’s role in reviewing the classified documents. In its application to the Supreme Court, Trump’s legal team had urged that the arbiter, called a special master, be given the opportunity to review the classified papers.

The application from the Republican former president was submitted to Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative anchor on the court, who has jurisdiction to review appeals from the 11th Circuit.

The court responded in a one-sentence order with no noted dissents. It said 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.”

The decision from the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit came after a federal judge in Florida temporarily barred the government from using the secret papers for criminal investigative purposes pending the special master review.

Trump’s legal team had not gone so far as to ask the Supreme Court to again freeze the agents’ use of the confidential documents.