Politics

(Reuters) – U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a congressman of some 30 years, beat fellow longtime Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney in a rare incumbent-vs-incumbent primary in New York, NBC News projected on Tuesday.

The contest between two leading U.S. House of Representatives Democrats resulted from a court-mandated redrawing of districts in New York state.

Nadler is expected to hold the seat against a Republican opponent in the Nov. 8 general election.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Vancouver; Editing by Scott Malone)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Voters in New York and Florida picked candidates for the U.S. Congress and other offices in primaries and special elections on Tuesday that will help gauge the roles that abortion rights and inflation will play in the Nov. 8 midterms.

Following are five key races:

NEW YORK 19TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, SPECIAL ELECTION

Tuesday’s contest to fill a vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives district north of New York City will be an early test of whether voters across the country will be swayed in November by Democrats’ support for abortion rights or by the Republican promise to control inflation.

The race for the Hudson Valley swing district could be the tightest special election since June’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to abortion. Like other Democrats nationwide, Pat Ryan’s congressional campaign has made abortion rights a central theme. And like fellow Republicans nationwide, Marc Molinaro has accused Democratic President Joe Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress of fueling inflation with public spending.

Ryan and Molinaro are also competing on Tuesday in nomination contests for November’s general election but they are seeking different House seats in that race following a redrawing of district boundaries for next year’s Congress.

NEW YORK 12TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler defeated fellow Representative Carolyn Maloney in a closely-watched race that pitted the two long-time politicians against each other. A new congressional map ordered by a state judge had merged their former districts.

While Maloney outspent Nadler, using her personal fortune to lend her campaign $900,000 in May, Nadler won endorsements from party power brokers like U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

NEW YORK 17TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

U.S. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a mainstream Democrat who heads his party’s main House fundraising group, won the primary for his party’s nomination to the state’s newly drawn 17th congressional district north of New York City.

He fended off a challenge from New York state Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a progressive who was endorsed by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FOR FLORIDA GOVERNOR

Democratic U.S. Representative Charlie Crist beat Nikki Fried, the state agricultural commissioner, to win his party’s nomination for the Florida governor race.

Crist, a former Republican governor who changed parties in 2012 and lost the gubernatorial race as a Democrat to Rick Scott in 2014, will challenge Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican seen as potentially vulnerable in November despite his high approval ratings and rising national profile.

FLORIDA U.S. SENATE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

U.S. Representative Val Demings, a former police chief of Orlando, won her party’s nomination to challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. Rubio is seen as potentially vulnerable, with recent polls pointing to a tight race between him and Demings.

(Reporting by Jason Lange and Moira Warburton; Editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Rosalba O’Brien)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Pat Ryan won a special election for a New York State seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a role he will fill through early January, Edison Research projected on Tuesday.

Ryan beat Republican Marc Molinaro in the first competitive House contest since the U.S. Supreme Court in June eliminated the nationwide right to abortion.

(Reporting by Scott Malone)

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NEW YORK (AP) — He helped lead the fight to impeach Donald Trump. She battled for people sickened by clouds of toxic soot after the Sept. 11 attacks.

At least one of New York City’s most veteran members of Congress will be voted out of office Tuesday in a Democratic primary pitting U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler against U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a race both hoped to avoid.

The unusual battle between incumbents who are usually allies is the result of a redistricting process that lumped Nadler’s home base on the west side of Manhattan together with Maloney’s on the east side. Both lawmakers live in New York’s newly configured 12th Congressional District.

Neither was willing to run in another part of the city.

Nadler and Maloney are joined in the race by 38-year-old Suraj Patel, a lawyer and lecturer at New York University who also challenged Maloney in Democratic primaries in 2018 and 2020. A fourth candidate, Ashmi Sheth, a former Federal Reserve Bank of New York employee, is on the ballot but did not meet fundraising benchmarks to qualify for debates.

Nadler, 75, was first elected to Congress in 1992. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, he led both impeachments of Republican former President Donald Trump. He was buoyed in the last weeks of the campaign by endorsements from The New York Times and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Maloney, 76, was also first elected in 1992. She is the first woman to chair the House Oversight and Reform Committee. She is known for her longtime advocacy for Sept. 11 first responders seeking compensation for diseases they attribute to contamination from the destruction of the World Trade Center. She wore a firefighter’s jacket on Capitol Hill and at the 2019 Met Gala.

Few policy differences between Nadler, Maloney and Patel emerged during the primary campaign.

All support abortion rights, the Green New Deal and tighter restrictions on gun ownership. Patel argued that Nadler’s and Maloney’s generation failed to achieve Democratic goals like codifying Roe v. Wade and should cede to new blood.

Nadler and Maloney countered that their seniority in Congress brings clout that benefits New Yorkers.

Friends for many years, the two Democrats lamented having to run against each other — something that only happened after a court redrew the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts after concluding the legislature botched the process.

“I didn’t want to run against my good friend, Jerry Nadler,” Maloney said at a recent debate. “We have been friends and allies for years. Unfortunately, we were drawn into the same district.”

Still, on the campaign trail Maloney said that as a woman, she would fight harder to protect abortion rights than Nadler.

Asked at a debate how his record differed from that of Maloney, Nadler cited his votes against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, and in favor of the Iran nuclear deal. Maloney, also elected to Congress in 1992, voted the other way on all three.

Maloney also came under fire from her opponents for her past positions on vaccines, including in 2006 when she introduced legislation directing the federal government to study the debunked theory that vaccines can cause autism. Maloney insisted that she supports vaccines and regretted ever questioning vaccine safety.

The primary winner in the overwhelmingly Democratic district will face Republican Michael Zumbluskas in the November general election.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Two loyalists of former President Donald Trump who both have embraced his false claim that he won the 2020 election face off Tuesday in a contest that likely will decide who will be Oklahoma’s next U.S. senator.

U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a plumbing company owner from Westville, and T.W. Shannon, a former speaker of the Oklahoma House and a bank executive from Oklahoma City, were the top two vote-getters in June’s 13-candidate Republican primary, but neither topped the 50% threshold needed to win the nomination outright. Mullin, who topped the field with nearly 44% of the vote, earned Trump’s endorsement shortly after the primary.

Mullin and Shannon are seeking to replace retiring 87-year-old U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, a fixture in Republican politics in Oklahoma since the 1960s who has held the U.S. Senate seat since being elected in 1994.

Polls across the state will be open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

The winner of the contest will be heavily favored in November’s general election against former Democratic U.S. Rep. Kendra Horn, along with an independent and a Libertarian. Oklahoma hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in more than 30 years.

In a state where nearly 10% of the population identifies as American Indian, both Mullin and Shannon are members of Native American tribes — Mullin a Cherokee citizen and Shannon, who is also African American, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.

Campaign finance reports show that Mullin has raised about $3.6 million, which is nearly three times the $1.3 million that Shannon has reported he raised.

In campaign ads and on the stump, both men have touted their positions on hot-button issues and vowed to fight President Joe Biden’s policy agenda. Shannon launched an anti-abortion ad in which he labeled Planned Parenthood the “true face of white supremacy,” while Mullin in an ad featuring two of his own children and a montage of transgender collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, said: “Democrats can’t even tell us what a woman is.”

Also on Tuesday, Democrats Jason Bollinger, an Oklahoma City attorney, and Madison Horn, a cybersecurity expert, will face off in the primary runoff in the race for Oklahoma’s other U.S. Senate seat. The winner will face incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford, who will be heavy favorite in November, along with a Republican and an independent.

In the race for an open U.S. House seat in eastern Oklahoma, Republicans Josh Brecheen, a former state senator from Coalgate, and state Rep. Avery Frix, of Muskogee, face off in the GOP runoff after emerging as the top two candidates in June’s 14-candidate primary. The winner will face Democrat Naomi Andrews, of Tulsa, and independent Ben Robinson, of Muskogee, in November.

Also on the ballot Tuesday will be Republican primary runoffs for several statewide offices, including state superintendent of public instruction, state treasurer, labor commissioner and corporation commissioner.

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MIAMI (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is poised to learn the identity of his general election opponent on Tuesday as Democrats choose between a man who spent a lifetime in politics — much of it as a Republican — and a woman casting herself as “something new” as she seeks the energy of her party’s resurgent base.

The Democratic establishment has largely lined up behind Charlie Crist, a 66-year-old Democratic congressman who served as the state’s Republican governor more than a decade ago. Running now as a moderate Democrat, Crist is facing 44-year-old Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who hopes to become the state’s first female governor while leaning into the fight for abortion rights.

The race is ultimately a debate over who is best-positioned to defeat DeSantis, who emerged from a narrow victory four years ago to become one of the most prominent Republicans in politics. His relatively light touch handling the pandemic and his eagerness to lean into divides over race, gender and LGBTQ rights have resonated with many Republican voters who see DeSantis as a natural heir to former President Donald Trump.

His reelection effort is widely assumed to be a precursor to a presidential run in 2024, adding to a sense of urgency among Democrats to blunt his rise now.

“I have been in the trenches. I have taken on DeSantis,” Fried told The Associated Press. DeSantis “won’t have a 2024 because he won’t have a 2022. We are going to beat him in November, and we are going to kill all of his aspirations to run for president of the United States.”

Crist, in an interview, described DeSantis as a threat to democracy.

“He is the opposite of freedom. He is an autocrat. He is a demagogue. And I think people are sick of him,” Crist said of the sitting Republican governor, noting that DeSantis earlier this year admonished a group of high school students for wearing face masks at an indoor news conference. “Who is this guy? Who does he think he is? He is not the boss.”

The Florida contest wraps up the busiest stretch of primaries this year. Republicans from Pennsylvania to Arizona have supported contenders who have embraced Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen, an assertion roundly rejected by elections officials, the former president’s attorney general and judges he appointed.

And for the most part, Democrats have avoided brutal primary fights. That could be tested Tuesday, however, as voters in New York participate in congressional primaries that feature two powerful Democratic committee chairs, Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler, competing for the same seat and other incumbents fending off challenges from the left.

Democrats are entering the final weeks ahead of the midterms with a sense of cautious optimism, hoping the Supreme Court’s decision overturning a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion will energize the party’s base. But Democrats still face tremendous headwinds, including economic uncertainty and the historic reality that most parties lose seats in the first midterm after they’ve won the White House.

The dynamics are especially challenging for Democrats in Florida, one of the most politically divided states in the U.S. Its last three races for governor were decided by 1 percentage point or less. But the state has steadily become more favorable to Republicans in recent years.

For the first time in modern history, Florida has more registered Republicans — nearly 5.2 million — than Democrats, who have nearly 5 million registered voters. Fried serves as the only Democrat in statewide office. And Republicans have no primary competition for four of those five positions – governor, U.S. Senate, attorney general and chief financial officer — which are all held by GOP incumbents.

Democrats hope that U.S. Rep. Val Demings, who faces a little-known candidate in her Senate primary Tuesday, can unseat the state’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Marco Rubio, this fall. But for now, the party’s national leadership is prioritizing competitive Senate contests in other states, including neighboring Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

In Florida’s governor’s race, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision has animated the final weeks of the Democratic primary.

Fried has promoted herself as the only true abortion-rights supporter in the race, seizing on Crist’s appointment of two conservative Supreme Court justices while he was governor.

The conservative-leaning court will soon decide whether the Republican-backed state legislature’s law to ban abortions after 15 weeks is constitutional. Florida’s new abortion law is in effect, with exceptions if the procedure is necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life, to prevent serious injury or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It does not allow exemptions in cases of rape, incest or human trafficking.

Crist insisted he is “pro-choice” and highlighted a bill he vetoed as governor in 2010 that would have required women seeking a first-trimester abortion to get and pay for an ultrasound exam.

“It is a woman’s right to choose,” Crist told the AP. “My record is crystal clear. And for my opponent to try to muddy that up is unconscionable, unfair and unwise.”

In experience and personality, voters have a clear contrast between Crist, an establishment-backed lifelong politician viewed as a relatively safe choice, and Fried, a newer face who may be in better position to catch fire with the party’s most passionate voters.

Crist has raised $14 million so far this election cycle, nearly twice as much money as Fried. Having served in elected office since 1992, his supporters describe him as reliable and personable with an excellent memory.

“He is the best retail politician in Florida in this century. He is just an outstanding politician. He asks about my grandchildren by name,” said Mac Stipanovich, a political strategist who served as chief of staff to former Republican Gov. Bob Martinez.

Meanwhile, Fried has gained twice as many followers on every social network and is quick to jump on online trends. She built her profile as one of DeSantis’ fiercest opponents, regularly challenging him on policy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. She also created a position within her department to ensure LGBTQ members are given opportunities as DeSantis wages what the Human Rights Campaign recently described as “an assault on transgender Floridians.”

DeSantis signed into law what opponents called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that bans lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and restricts it in upper grades. He also championed the “stop WOKE act” that restricts race-based conversation and analysis in business and education, although a Florida judge last week declared the law an unconstitutional violation of free speech.

Such issues have been good for DeSantis’ standing with GOP voters.

The Florida governor touted his record at a weekend rally with more than 1,000 Pennsylvania voters, having already recently campaigned for Republican allies across Arizona, New Mexico and Ohio.

DeSantis was officially in Pennsylvania to help the GOP gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano. But DeSantis barely mentioned Mastriano’s name in remarks to his Pittsburgh audience and focused instead on the political battles he fought in Florida to confront liberal “woke ideology.”

He didn’t mention that he’s running for reelection for governor this year.

“If you lead and lead with strength and courage, and you deliver results, the people will be with you,” DeSantis said.

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Peoples reported from Washington, Farrington from Tallahassee. Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics.

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(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday signaled he was open to the U.S. Department of Justice’s effort to block a near-total ban on abortions in Idaho from being enforced in emergencies, saying it could prevent care to pregnant women whose lives are in danger.

The case is President Joe Biden’s administration’s first legal challenge to a state abortion ban since the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned the nationwide constitutional right to the procedure.

At a hearing, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise echoed the administration’s concerns that the Idaho law, which takes effect Thursday, could discourage doctors from offering emergency abortions as required by federal law to pregnant women facing the risk of death or serious injury.

The Biden administration’s lawsuit, filed on Aug. 2, argues Idaho’s near-total ban would infringe on the rights women have to emergency medical care at hospitals under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

While the Idaho law allows for abortions to prevent the death of a pregnant woman, Winmill noted it did so only by allowing doctors who are prosecuted under the law to argue at trial that they had a good faith basis to believe that the patient’s life was in danger.

Monte Stewart, a lawyer for the state’s Republican-led legislature, argued prosecutors were unlikely to bring such a case in the “real world.” But Winmill said the fact that prosecution was unlikely was little comfort to doctors.

“It would be the rare situation where a doctor is willing or anxious to push the limits and go right up to the edge of what is allowed under the Idaho abortion statute,” said Winmill, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Brian Netter, arguing the government’s case, urged Winmill to block a “law which will cause drastic effects and dramatic consequences” for patients and doctors.

Winmill said he would rule by Wednesday.

About half of all U.S. states have or are expected to seek to ban or curtail abortions following the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to overturn its 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide.

Those states include Idaho, which like 12 others adopted “trigger” laws banning abortion upon such a decision. Trigger bans are being enforced in seven states and are set to take effect in Texas, Tennessee and North Dakota this week.

The Idaho Supreme Court earlier this month allowed the state’s near-total ban to take effect. Abortions are already banned in Idaho after about six weeks of pregnancy under a different law.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, editing by Deepa Babington and Alexia Garamfalvi)

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ATLANTA (AP) — Sen. Lindsey Graham is holding up the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause as a shield as he tries to avoid testifying before a special grand jury that’s investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others tried to illegally influence the 2020 election in Georgia.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wants to ask the South Carolina Republican about two phone calls she says he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff in the weeks after the 2020 general election, as well as the circumstances and logistics surrounding those calls. Raffensperger said at the time that Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots, a question he interpreted as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes.

Graham’s attorneys have argued that the calls were made as part of his legislative duties and that the speech or debate clause gives him absolute protection from having to testify.

The legal back-and-forth has already delayed Graham’s testimony, which had been been set for Tuesday.

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE SPEECH OR DEBATE CLAUSE?

Under Article I of the Constitution, “for any Speech or Debate in either House,” senators and U.S. House members “shall not be questioned in any other place.” Simply, the provision — “approved at the Constitutional Convention without discussion and without opposition,” the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in a 1966 decision — is intended to protect members of Congress from questioning about official legislative acts.

In a 1968 decision concerning a congressman’s conviction under a conflict of interest statute, the Supreme Court wrote that the provision’s intent was “to prevent legislative intimidation by and accountability to the other branches of government.”

WHAT DOES IT PROTECT?

The argument over whether Graham is protected by the clause in this case “is fundamentally about what kinds of acts are legislative versus what kinds of acts are not,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University.

Actions like speaking on the floor of the House or Senate, introducing legislation, working on a committee report and acts of legislative fact finding are all clearly covered, he said. News interviews, publications unrelated to official duties, political activities and engaging with the executive branch are not covered, he said.

WHAT ARE GRAHAM’S ARGUMENTS?

Graham has argued that the calls to Raffensperger involved his duties as a U.S. senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, so he should have absolute protection from having to testify in this case. In court earlier this month, Graham attorney Brian Lea argued that the senator’s responsibility to decide whether to vote to certify Georgia’s election results, coupled with his shepherding of election-related legislation, made the calls part of his legislative duties.

WHAT HAS WILLIS’ TEAM ARGUED?

Prosecutors have argued that the calls are just their starting point. They have also disputed the notion that the phone calls were solely about legislative issues, saying that Graham was seeking to make changes to the way Georgia handled absentee ballots ahead of January 2021 runoff elections for U.S. Senate.

WHAT DID THE JUDGE OVERSEEING GRAHAM’S CASE SAY?

Graham asked U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May to quash his subpoena and rule that he didn’t have to testify before the special grand jury. Last week, she declined to do that, meaning Graham was still set to appear on Tuesday.

May noted that the clause doesn’t protect actions that are political rather than legislative. Even if she accepted that the calls were “comprised entirely of legislative factfinding,” and thus protected, “there would still be significant areas of potential testimony related to the grand jury’s investigation on which Senator Graham could be questioned that would in no way fall within the Clause’s protections,” she wrote.

SO WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW?

Graham appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel of the appeals court on Sunday issued an order temporarily putting on hold May’s order rejecting Graham’s request to quash the subpoena. That also put his Tuesday appearance before the special grand jury temporarily on hold.

The appeals court sent the case back to May, instructing her to determine whether Graham “is entitled to a partial quashal or modification of the subpoena” based on the Constitution’s speech or debate clause.

May on Monday ordered the two sides to file briefs, with the final deadline at the middle of next week. She specifically asked them to “address whether, and to what extent, certain alleged conduct (including specific lines of inquiry on telephone calls) is shielded from questioning” by the clause.

And she asked them to discuss whether “informal investigative inquiries” by members of Congress are protected by the clause or whether it applies only to “investigative inquiries that originate from a more formal congressional source, such as an investigation authorized by a Senate subcommittee.”

THEN WHAT?

It’s hard to say. If she finds that Graham is not entitled to any protection from the speech or debate clause for this matter, she could rule that any questions that Willis’ team wants to ask are fair game, professor Kreis said. But if she finds that certain lines of questioning would infringe on his privilege under the clause, she could set “narrow guideposts,” he said.

Once May has ruled on this limited issue, the case will head back to the 11th Circuit for further consideration.

HAVE ANY OTHER POTENTIAL WITNESSES MADE SIMILAR ARGUMENTS?

Yes. U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican and Trump ally, also filed a motion in federal court seeking to quash his subpoena. His case was also heard by Judge May. During a hearing, Hice’s lawyers agreed that there were some questions he could be asked before the special grand jury that wouldn’t be protected by any immunity.

May sent the case back to Fulton County Superior Court. She said at the time that if disagreements were to arise over whether specific questions infringed on Hice’s federal immunities, he could bring the federal issues back to her to settle. It wasn’t immediately clear where that stands.

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Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C.

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Follow Brumback at http://twitter.com/katebrumback and Kinnard at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

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More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump on Monday asked a federal court to temporarily block the FBI from reviewing the materials it seized two weeks ago from his Florida home, until a special master can be appointed to oversee the review.

Trump’s motion, filed in a federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida, also demanded that the U.S. Justice Department provide him a more detailed property receipt outlining items the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago home during its Aug. 8 search, and asked investigators to return any items outside the scope of the search warrant.

“Politics cannot be allowed to impact the administration of justice,” the filing says. “Law enforcement is a shield that protects Americans. It cannot be used as a weapon for political purposes,” it added.

A special master can sometimes be appointed in highly sensitive cases to go through seized materials and ensure that investigators do not review privileged information.

When FBI agents searched the homes of Trump’s former lawyers Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan requested the appointment of a special master.

Trump’s request was assigned to U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, whom Trump appointed to the bench. A Justice Department spokesman said prosecutors will file their response in court.

“The Aug. 8 search warrant at Mar-a-Lago was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause,” spokesman Anthony Coley said.

Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the judge who approved the warrant, is weighing whether to require the Justice Department to release a redacted copy of the affidavit laying out evidence for probable cause to search Trump’s home.

The Justice Department at a court hearing last week opposed its release, saying it would provide a “roadmap” of its investigation and possibly chill witness cooperation.

In a court order filed earlier on Monday, Reinhart said he agreed those were legitimate concerns, but said he wants to explore whether there is a “less onerous alternative to sealing the entire document.”

The Justice Department has until noon on Thursday to provide him under seal a redacted copy of the document that he could potentially release to the public.

The Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago marked a significant escalation in one of the many federal and state investigations Trump faces from his time in office and in private business.

After Trump and his allies complained in the media that the search was politically motivated, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland asked the court to release a redacted copy of the search warrant and property receipt outlining the items taken.

The search is part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed documents when he left office in January 2021 after losing the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

During its search the FBI seized 11 sets of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, some of which were labeled “top secret” – the highest level of classification reserved for the most closely held U.S. national security information and which can only be viewed in special government facilities.

It is unclear whether Trump waited too long to seek the appointment of a special master.

Last week, Trump released a redacted Aug. 15 email he received from Jay Bratt, the department’s head of counterintelligence, who indicated he had deployed a “filter” team of agents tasked with weeding out privileged materials.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by Leslie Adler and David Gregorio)

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump on Monday asked a federal court to temporarily block the FBI from reviewing the materials it seized from his Florida home two weeks ago until a special master can be appointed to oversee the review.

Trump’s court motion, filed in a federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida, also demanded that the U.S. Justice Department provide him with a more-detailed property receipt outlining the items the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago home during its Aug. 8 search, and asked investigators to return any items that were not within the scope of the search warrant.

“Politics cannot be allowed to impact the administration of justice. President Donald J. Trump is the clear frontrunner in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary and in the 2024 General Election, should he decide to run,” the filing says.

“Law enforcement is a shield that protects Americans. It cannot be used as a weapon for political purposes,” the filing added.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Leslie Adler and David Gregorio)

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