DOJ's 'Compelling' Response to Trump SCOTUS Appeal Hailed by Legal Experts

Legal experts say that a Department of Justice (DOJ) filing in response to former President Donald Trump's request for the Supreme Court to intervene in the dispute over documents seized at Mar-a-Lago is "compelling" and "masterful."

Trump's lawyers filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court last week, urging them to allow special master Raymond Dearie to review the 100 documents recovered at his south Florida residence. The filing was in response to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that allowed the DOJ to continue using the classified documents in a criminal investigation of the former president. Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon had previously ruled that the documents would be off limits pending their review by Dearie.

The DOJ filed its response to Trump's request on Tuesday, the deadline that had been set by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is in charge of overseeing cases from the 11th Circuit. The brief from the DOJ urged the Supreme Court to reject Trump's request, arguing that the former president had not come close to showing he had been "irreparably injured" by the appeals court ruling and had demonstrated "no plausible claim of privilege or ownership" over the classified documents.

Legal experts and analysts soon praised the brief on social media. Former appellate defender Teri Kanefield tweeted that the DOJ filing was "extremely well done because Trump was appealing on narrow jurisdictional grounds" and contained facts that would be "devastating" for Trump.

"They throw in the devastating facts," Kanefield tweeted. "Trump had no right to possess the documents, the government kept trying to get them back, Trump would lie and say he had none, the government "developed evidence" that he was lying, etc. I like the phrase 'developed evidence' ... because it must drive Trump crazy not knowing who the rat is."

Neal Katyal, the Paul Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University and a former acting U.S. Solicitor General, called the filing "a masterful Supreme Court brief."

"This is how it's done," tweeted Katyal. "Like I think I'm a pretty good lawyer but if I had to write Trump's reply to this crazy good brief I have no idea what I would say. At all."

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called the brief "thoughtful" and "compelling," while suggesting that the former president seemed to be "begging" to be prosecuted by the DOJ.

"DOJ's response to Trump's effort to get SCOTUS to intervene for him is thoughtful & compelling," Vance tweeted. "As DOJ points out, it sought modest & thoroughly warranted relief from the 11th Circuit to avoid unprecedented interference by a district court judge in a criminal investigation."

"It's like Trump is begging DOJ to prosecute him if investigators discover he's still hiding classified materials," she added.

Harvard law professor and legal scholar Laurence Tribe called the filing "utterly devastating" for Trump in a tweet, maintaining that it leaves the former president's legal team with valid arguments.

"DOJ's response opposing the emergency application Trump's legal team filed in the Supreme Court, with a stopover in Justice Clarence Thomas's chambers, is utterly devastating," Tribe tweeted. "It pulverizes all of Trump's arguments and leaves none standing."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's legal team for comment.