Court seems skeptical of Trump claims in Mar-a-Lago case

A federal appeals court appeared deeply skeptical Tuesday that former President Donald Trump was entitled to challenge an FBI search of his Florida estate or to have an independent arbiter review documents that were seized from the home.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, including two Trump appointees, repeatedly suggested Trump was seeking special treatment in asking that the “special master” conduct an independent inspection of records taken in the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.

“Other than the fact that this involves a former president, everything else about this is indistinguishable from any pre-indictment search warrant,” said William Pryor, the court’s chief judge, a George W. Bush appointee.

He added: “We’ve got to be concerned about the precedent that we would create that would allow any target of a federal criminal investigation to go into a district court and to have a district court entertain this kind of petition ... and interfere with the executive branch’s ongoing investigation.”

The judges indicated through their questioning that they were likely to side with the Justice Department, which has sought an immediate end to a special master review process that it says has unnecessarily delayed its investigation into the presence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. It was not immediately clear when the court might rule.