Trump suffers setback as appeals panel rejects Cannon ruling
A three-judge appeals court panel has granted the Justice Department’s request to block aspects of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling that delayed a criminal investigation into highly sensitive documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
The panel ruled that Cannon, a Trump appointee, erred when she temporarily prevented federal prosecutors from using the roughly 100 documents — marked as classified – recovered from Trump’s estate as part of a criminal inquiry.
Trump “has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the panel ruled in a 29-page“,”link”:{“target”:”NEW”,”attributes”:[],”url”:”https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000183-625b-da48-a3e3-e2ff83050000″,”_id”:”00000183-62d5-d258-a1a3-e6f57e500000″,”_type”:”33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df”},”_id”:”00000183-62d5-d258-a1a3-e6f57e500001″,”_type”:”02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266″}’>29-page decision. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents.”
Two of the three judges on the panel, Andrew Brasher and Britt Grant, were appointed to the court by Trump. The third, Robin Rosenbaum, was appointed by President Barack Obama. In the unanimous decision, the judges declared it “self-evident” that the public interest favored allowing the Justice Department to determine whether any of the records were improperly disclosed, risking national security damage.
“For our part, we cannot discern why Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings,” the appeals court wrote in an opinion that listed no individual judge as the author.
While Cannon speculated in her ruling that allowing investigators continued access to the documents could result in leaks of their contents, the appeals panel brushed aside that concern.
“Permitting the United States to retain the documents does not suggest that they will be released; indeed, a purpose of the United States’s efforts in investigating the recovered classified documents is to limit unauthorized disclosure of the information they contain,” the appeals judges wrote. “Not only that, but any authorized official who makes an improper disclosure risks her own criminal liability.”
The 11th Circuit’s rules appear to preclude any attempt to ask the full bench of that court to reconsider the government’s motion, but Trump could seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court.
Trump attorney Christopher Kise did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
The appeals court’s opinion was unsparing toward Cannon and replete with indications that the appeals judges took a vastly different approach to the document fight than she did.
Trump’s legal team, Cannon and even a senior judge that she appointed as a special master have generally referred to the national-security documents at issue as “marked classified,” deferring at least to a degree to Trump’s claim that he declassified all the records found at Mar-a-Lago, despite a lack of evidence buttressing his assertion. But the appeals court panel took a different approach, often referring without qualification to the records as “classified.”
They also characterized the public dispute over potential declassification of the documents as a “red herring,” contending that even if true, “that would not explain why [Trump] has a personal interest in them.”
Throughout their ruling, the …read more
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/21/donald-trump-special-master-00058176
Read: 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling
A federal appeals court is allowing the Justice Department to continue looking at documents marked as classified that were seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and home, upending a trial judge’s order over those documents that had blocked federal investigators’ work on them.
Read the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling here. …read more
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After an appeals court struck down key portions of a state law designed to prevent social media companies from freely making content moderation decisions, Florida wants the Supreme Court to weigh in.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a petition Wednesday asking the highest court in the land to wade into the issue after two federal appeals courts issued contradictory rulings.
In Florida, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit determined that it was unconstitutional for the state to prevent social media companies from issuing bans to political figures. While the court struck down most of the Florida law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit just upheld a parallel law in Texas known as House Bill 20, ruling that it did not violate social media sites’ First Amendment rights.
In Florida, Senate Bill 7072 prohibits platforms for banning or deprioritizing candidates for state office as well as news outlets above a certain size threshold. The law would open social media companies up to lawsuits when users or the state determine that they moderated content or user accounts in a way that violated the spirit of the law.
Unlike in Texas, the court that examined the Florida law found that social media companies fell under the First Amendment when it comes to making decisions about moderating content.
“We conclude that social media platforms’ content-moderation activities — permitting, removing, prioritizing, and deprioritizing users and posts — constitute ‘speech’ within the meaning of the First Amendment,” the panel of judges wrote in the court ruling.
Netchoice, an industry group representing Meta, Google, Twitter and other tech companies, projected confidence that the Supreme Court would resolve the state-level fight over content moderation in its favor, though how things will shake out is ultimately difficult to predict.
“We agree with Florida that the U.S. Supreme Court should hear this case…” NetChoice Vice President and General Counsel Carl Szabo said. “We look forward to seeing Florida in Court and having the lower court’s decision upheld. We have the Constitution and over a century of precedent on our side.”
Florida escalates the fight over a controversial social media law to the Supreme Court by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/21/florida-social-media-law-supreme-court/
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A federal appeals court is allowing the Justice Department to continue looking at documents marked as classified that were seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort. …read more
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