World enews: Justice Department urges Supreme Court to reject Trump request over seized Mar-a-Lago documents

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to reject former President Donald Trump‘s request to allow the special master reviewing documents seized from Mar-a-Lago access to those marked as classified.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in court papers that Trump would suffer “no harm at all” if the documents are temporarily withheld from the special master. Addressing Trump’s potential ownership stake in the documents, including possible assertions of attorney-client privilege of executive privilege, Prelogar said Trump had “no plausible claims.”

Whatever the court decides in weighing Trump’s relatively narrow request, it will not affect the Justice Department’s access to the same documents in its criminal investigation. The more than 100 classified documents are just a small portion of the 11,000 records seized by federal agents amid concerns that Trump had unlawfully retained official White House records after leaving office.

Documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. Department of Justice via AP

The high court is reviewing a Sept. 21 decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that barred the special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, from reviewing the documents. Trump had not contested a separate part of the ruling that allowed the Justice Department to use the documents.

A decision by the Supreme Court is due at any time.

Prelogar said the case only arose because of an “unusual — indeed unprecedented — order” that was issued by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in response to Trump’s lawsuit filed after the government search of his Mar-a-Lago residence in early August. Cannon prevented the government from using the documents as part of a criminal investigation, a decision partly blocked by the appeals court, and appointed the special master to review them.

“This application concerns an unprecedented order by the district court restricting the Executive Branch’s use of its own highly classified records in an ongoing criminal investigation and directing the dissemination of those records outside the Executive Branch for a special-master review,” Prelogar wrote.

Trump’s lawyers had said the appeal’s court’s decision to block access to the special master “impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the special master.” They added that “any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a president’s home erodes public confidence in our system of justice.”

The appeals court said certain documents are deemed classified because they contain information that could harm national security, and for that reason people may have access to them only if they need to know that information.

Under federal law, official White House records are federal property and must be handed over to the National Archives when the president leaves office. Trump says he did nothing improper and wants Dearie to determine the status of the documents, including those marked as classified.

Although the Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, including three justices he appointed, Trump has not recently fared well in other emergency applications, including his attempt to prevent White House documents from being handed over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and his bid to avoid disclosure of his financial records to prosecutors in New York.

Lawrence Hurley covers the Supreme Court for NBC News Digital.