Donald Trump 'has not even attempted to show' why he needs classified documents: federal appeals court

In a top national security case the U.S. Dept of Justice Wednesday evening was granted its request for a partial stay of a ruling handed down by a federal district judge who refused to allow DOJ to access or use the 100 classified documents it seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence.

In its scathing 29-page rebuke of Trump and U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, published by Politico, the three judges on the 11th Circuit court of appeals – two appointed by Trump, one by President Barack Obama – blasted the arguments Trump’s legal team had made.

“For our part, we cannot discern why Plaintiff [Trump] would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings,” the judges wrote in their opinion. “Classified documents are marked to show they are classified, for instance, with their classification level.”

“They are ‘owned by, produced by or for, or . . . under the control of the United States Government.'”

“And they include information the ‘unauthorized disclosure [of which] could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security,'” the panel added. “For this reason, a person may have access to classified information only if, among other requirements, he ‘has a need-to-know the information.'”

“This requirement pertains equally to former Presidents, unless the current administration, in its discretion, chooses to waive that requirement.”

Donald Trump “has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the judges continue. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why Plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents.”

The rebuke comes just hours after New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a massive civil fraud case against the former president, three of his adult children, his former CFO, and several of his companies.

Read the entire ruling here.

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