The Daily Fuckup

A federal appeals court on Dec. 1, 2022, wiped out the special-master process that had been slowing the government’s use of records seized from Donald Trump’s Florida club and told the lower court to dismiss the civil case. The decision meant the Justice Department could continue using the materials in its criminal investigation without the court-ordered review that had been in place.

The Eleventh Circuit did not merely affirm or reverse a procedural ruling. It vacated the district court’s order appointing a special master, vacated the related injunction, and remanded the case with instructions to dismiss the underlying civil action. In the panel’s view, the district court should not have stepped in to block the government from reviewing lawfully seized records in the way it did.

Trump’s legal team had asked for an outside reviewer to sort through the seized documents and protect any privilege claims. The appeals court rejected that approach and declined to give the former president a special carve-out from ordinary rules.

The ruling did not answer whether Trump would face charges over the documents. It did remove the main court-created obstacle that had limited how quickly investigators could work through the material taken from Mar-a-Lago.