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Hey, good morning, Playbookers. I'm Raghumanobalin. It's Friday. Today's show, a major legal

defeat for Donald Trump will tell you what happened. It's your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.

You might have missed it, but late yesterday, the Elements Circuit delivered a unanimous opinion

shutting down the special master review of the documents that the FBI seized for Mar-a-Lago

and dismissing Donald Trump's civil lawsuit over the matter. The opinion was an embarrassing

rebuke of U.S. District Court Judge Eileen Cannon for indulging what legal scholars

across the ideological spectrum described as Trump's

specious arguments. The appeals court did not think the case was even a close call. The opinion

began. This appeal requires us to consider whether the district court had jurisdiction

to block the United States from using lawfully seized records in a criminal investigation.

The answer is no.

It went downhill for Cannon and Trump from there, and the opinion ended with an unambiguous spanking.

The law is clear.

We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government

investigations after the execution of the warrant.

Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.

Either approach would be a radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal court's

involvement and criminal investigations, and both would violate bedrock separation of powers

limitations.

Politico's Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney have a story up in today's playbook that you can read

but a quick excerpt for next steps, Trump can appeal the ruling to either the full bench of the 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court,

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