The Department of Justice is not resigned to stopping the investigation of Donald Trump's papers obtained in the registry of his mansion while an independent expert reviews them.
This Thursday he has informed the court that he made the decision to block the work of the FBI with the secret documents that he will appeal that decision.
The judge who gave the order to stop the investigation was appointed on her day by Donald Trump when he was president.
Among those who have to resolve the appeal, those appointed by the former president are also the majority.
The announcement of the appeal does not give details of the arguments that the Prosecutor's Office will present in its appeal.
The judge's decision to appoint a special expert and freeze the investigation had been somewhat controversial for preventing the progress of a federal investigation for several possible crimes, including obstruction of justice.
Regardless of whether the case is delayed, the appointed expert will have great power to remove or not remove from the case certain documents seized in the August 8 search at Mar-a-Lago, including 100 classified as secret or confidential.
Each decision of the expert can in turn lead to appeals that have to be resolved in court.
The investigation can be substantially complicated.
Judge Aileen Cannon, head of a federal court in South Florida, decided on Monday, in a 24-page order, that "a special expert be appointed to review the seized assets, handle allegations of privilege [executive or attorney -client] and make recommendations in this regard and evaluate the claims for the return of the goods”.
The judge also "temporarily prohibited the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes until the review of the special expert is completed or a new court order is issued."
The Government may continue to review and use the documents for purposes of intelligence classification and national security assessments, but not for investigation as such.
The Department of Justice has registered another motion before the court stating that this bifurcation does not make sense and asking that the investigation can continue at least in relation to the classified documents, since otherwise, it assures, it would cause "irreparable damage" to it.
He alleges that the FBI is part of the intelligence services and that the assessment of the possible damage to national security and the criminal investigation are intertwined.
“To assess the full extent of potential national security harm resulting from improper retention of classified records, the government must assess the likelihood that improperly stored classified information may have been accessed by others and compromised.
But that inquiry is a central aspect of the FBI's criminal investigation."
Expert Candidates
The judge asked the parties to propose a list of potential candidates for the position of expert by this Friday.
Not only is consensus difficult, but it will be difficult for each side to find someone with the necessary access to secret documents qualification and who is willing to perform a task that is going to be subject to great public scrutiny and that involves reviewing thousands of documents
Trump's lawyers had requested that review, among other things, in case there were documents that could compromise the privilege of the attorney-client relationship, that is, professional secrecy in relation to the relationship between said parties.
The Justice Department countered that it had created a separate filtering team from the investigative team to identify those potential documents and that it had already separated 520 pages of documents potentially affected by that privilege, thus claiming that no further review was necessary.
Trump also alleged the so-called executive privilege, whereby the government typically refuses to provide information about internal deliberations to another branch, such as the legislative or judicial branches.
In this case, however, Trump is no longer part of the executive branch, nor did the request for the papers come from another power, but from the National Archives themselves, which are part of the Administration.
The investigation thus enters a complicated procedural channel, with a set of decisions and resources that can delay it.
In addition, in the last case, if the matter reached the Supreme Court, it would find there a majority of six conservative justices (three of them appointed by Trump) against three progressives.
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