The U.S. Justice Department can resume reviewing classified records seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump's Florida home pending appeal, a federal court ruled on Wednesday, giving a boost to the criminal investigation into whether the records were mishandled or compromised.
The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by federal prosecutors to block U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's stay barring them from using the classified documents in their probe until an independent arbiter, called a special master, vets the materials to weed out any that could be deemed privileged and withheld from investigators.
The appeals court also said it would agree to reverse a portion of the lower court's order that required the government to hand over records with classification markings for the special master's review.