Mar-a-lago

A federal appeals court has halted an independent review of documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, removing a hurdle the Justice Department said had delayed its criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret government information.

The Justice Department and lawyers for Donald Trump are at odds over whether the former president can assert executive privilege over documents seized from his Florida estate to shield them from investigators.

The court's action was announced even as the Jan. 6 committee was conducting its last public hearing focused on Trump's role in the violence at the Capitol after the election.

Trump's legal team argued that the lower court lacked the authority to grant an appeal, which allowed the Justice Department to continue its investigation without supervision from a special master.

When it mattered most, Nixon and his crew found that people who might have been political allies in the past were not especially sympathetic to his case.

Dearie, 78, a former chief judge of the federal court in the Eastern District of New York, was one of the special master candidates suggested by Trump whom the Justice Department did not object to.

The Justice Department said Monday that it was willing to accept one of Donald Trump's picks for an independent arbiter to review documents seized during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last month.

Donald Trump’s lawyers dismissed as a “storage dispute” the former president’s retention of top-secret documents at his Florida home and urged a judge Monday to keep in place a directive that temporarily halted key aspects of the Justice Department’s criminal probe. The Trump team also said it opposed the candidates the Justice Department proposed for an independent arbiter. That move sets the stage for possible further delays to the investigation.

Before Mar-a-Lago housed government documents, the opulent mansion had a rich and lively history. And it all begins with a wealthy heiress.

A federal judge is not yet ruling on former President Donald Trump's request for a special master, saying she will enter a written order at some point.

The Justice Department said Tuesday it had uncovered efforts to obstruct its investigation into the discovery of classified documents at former President Donald Trump's Florida estate