A US federal appeals court has ended an independent review of documents seized from 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 decision by the three-judge panel represents a significant win for federal prosecutors, clearing the way for them to use as part of their investigation the entire tranche of documents seized during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8.
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It also amounts to a sharp repudiation of arguments by the former president’s lawyers, who for months had said that he was entitled to have a so-called “special master” conduct a neutral review of the thousands of documents taken from the property.
