The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to weigh in on the battle over documents that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents took while executing a search warrant at his Florida estate.
The ex-president’s lawyers wanted the court to ensure that more than 100 classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago are included in a special master review approved by Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
Though six of the high court’s nine justices are right-wingers—and Trump appointed three of them—the rejection was widely anticipated by legal experts.
I anticipated this result (on @MSignorile) as did virtually everybody watching this case … I just don't think SCOTUS will run interference for Trump in the Mar-a-Lago mess.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) October 13, 2022
When Trump’s team filed the request earlier this month, University of Texas at Austin law professor and CNN analyst Steve Vladeck explained that “this is what good lawyers who are stuck do to appease bad clients: The jurisdictional argument is narrow, technical, and nonfrivolous.”
“It’s a way of filing something in the Supreme Court without going all the way to crazytown and/or acting unethically,” he said.
While Vladeck correctly predicted that the justices would reject the modest request, he also noted that even if they granted it, such an order would not impede the ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, as Trump’s attorneys notably did not ask the court to block the DOJ’s use of the records.
Vladeck said Thursday that though decisions like this one do not require the justices to publicly disclose their position, the fact that none of them publicly dissented or wrote separately “is as big a loss” for the former president as he could’ve received.
On why this was never going to succeed, here’s my @MSNBC piece:https://t.co/xfcz1znqD9
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) October 13, 2022
The Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene in the case came as the U.S. House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack voted Thursday to subpoena Trump.
The twice-impeached former president, who’s expected to run again in 2024, also faces potential legal trouble in Georgia for his attempts to overturn the last presidential election and in New York for alleged criminal fraud involving the Trump Organization.
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY POSTED HERE.
