No Vetting Of Classified Documents, Supreme Court Tells Trump

The US Supreme Court has rejected former President Donald Trump's bid to have an independent arbiter vet classified documents that were seized by the FBI from his Florida home as part of his legal battle against investigators probing his handling of sensitive government records, Andrew Chung reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: The move Thursday appears to greatly reduce the potential impact of the special master process to the ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation into the classified documents.

The justices in a brief order denied Trump's Oct. 4 emergency request to lift a lower court's decision that prevented the arbiter from reviewing more than 100 documents marked as classified that were among the roughly 11,000 records seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on Aug. 8.

The move Thursday appears to greatly reduce the potential impact of the special master process to the ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation into the classified documents, Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko reported for the Associated Press (AP.)

A federal appeals court had already restored the department’s access to the classified documents, which had been investigators’ primary goal.

And the Supreme Court’s decision to stay out of the fray ensures that the special master will not have access to those same records as the FBI and Justice Department evaluate if criminal charges are merited, Eric Tucker also reported for AP.

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