WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene in the litigation over documents marked as classified that the F.B.I. removed from his Florida estate, saying that an appeals court had lacked jurisdiction to rule on the matter.
Although the Supreme Court is dominated by six conservative justices, three of them appointed by Mr. Trump, it has rejected earlier efforts to block the disclosure of information about him, and legal experts said Mr. Trump’s new emergency application faced significant challenges.
The new filing was largely technical, saying that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, had not been authorized to stay aspects of a trial judge’s order appointing a special master in the case. “The 11th Circuit lacked jurisdiction to review the special master order, which authorized the review of all materials seized from President Trump’s residence, including documents bearing classification markings,” the application said.
Trump’s emergency application to the Supreme Court comes after the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Justice Department and said that the department’s criminal investigation into the documents marked as classified could continue. The probe’s use of the records had been put on hold by a district judge in Florida, who granted a Trump request for a third-party review of the materials obtained in the Mar-a-Lago search.
The appeal puts the political spotlight back on to the Supreme Court.
Earlier this year, he asked the justices to block the release of documents from his White House to congressional US Capitol attack investigators. The high court rejected the request.
