Appeals panel says judge erred in blocking DOJ probe of Mar-a-Lago documents

[LetMyPeopleVote]

12. The opinion by this three-judge panel was fun to read

I love good legal draftmanship and this opinion is well done. The opinion in effect rebukes Judge Loose Cannon and shows that she does not understand the law.

Here is a link to the opinion. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000183-625b-da48-a3e3-e2ff83050000

The three-judge panel destroys some Judge Loose Cannon's claims. For example, the court held that TFG has no right to the 100 secret classified document. These documents are owned by the Federal government and not TFG

. They are “owned by, produced by
or for, or . . . under the control of the United States Government.”
Id. § 1.1. And they include information the “unauthorized disclosure [of which] could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable
or describable damage to the national security.” Id. § 1.4. For this
reason, a person may have access to classified information only if,
among other requirements, he “has a need-to-know the information.” Id. § 4.1(a)(3). This requirement pertains equally to former Presidents, unless the current administration, in its discretion,
chooses to waive that requirement. Id. § 4.4(3).

The declassification argument is a red herring in that declassification has no effect on who owns these documents

Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President. But the record contains no evidence
that any of these records were declassified. And before the special
master, Plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents. See Doc. No. 97 at 2–3., Sept. 19,
2022, letter from James M. Trusty, et al., to Special Master Raymond J. Dearie, at 2–3. In any event, at least for these purposes,
the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying
an official document would not change its content or render it personal. So even if we assumed that Plaintiff did declassify some or
all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal
interest in them.
This factor—the Plaintiff’s personal interest (or lack thereof)
in the documents—also weighs against exercising jurisdiction.

The panel rejects Loose Cannon's claim that TFG is special and this opinion treats TFG the same as ordinary citizen.

The remaining potential injury identified by the district
court is “the threat of future prosecution and the serious, often indelible stigma associated therewith.” Doc. No. 64 at 10. No doubt
the threat of prosecution can weigh heavily on the mind of someone under investigation. But without diminishing the seriousness
of that burden, “if the mere threat of prosecution were allowed to
constitute irreparable harm . . . every potential defendant could
point to the same harm and invoke the equitable powers of the district court.” United States v. Search of Law Office, Residence, and
Storage Unit Alan Brown, 341 F.3d 404, 415 (5th Cir. 2003) (quotation omitted). If this concern were sufficient to constitute irreparable harm, courts’ “exercise of [their] equitable jurisdiction would
not be extraordinary, but instead quite ordinary.” Id........

Second, we find unpersuasive Plaintiff’s insistence that he
would be harmed by a criminal investigation. “Bearing the discomfiture and cost of a prosecution for crime even by an innocent person is one of the painful obligations of citizenship.” Cobbledick v.
United States, 309 U.S. 323, 325 (1940)

I had fun geeking out are reading this opinion.