Donald Trump just scored a major and significant legal win earlier this week, one that temporarily deters the Justice Department’s investigation into his potential mishandling of documents. These files, (some of which marked as classified), CNN reports, were seized in the infamous Mar-a-Lago FBI raid last month.
A federal judge has approved former President Donald Trump’s request for a special master to review evidence the FBI seized at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month https://t.co/rPq5Yy7mKV pic.twitter.com/BcJO9mraSc
— CNN (@CNN) September 5, 2022
On Monday, September 5th, a federal judge granted the twice-impeached former president his request for a special master to review the evidence taken from his Florida home. The Justice Department now cannot access the thousands of documents, and US District Judge Aileen Cannon permitted a third-party attorney to analyze all the seized materials, “not just for documents covered by attorney-client privilege — the circumstance in which special masters are usually used — but also for potential executive privilege concerns,” CNN explains, a move the Justice Department has said would be “unprecedented.” However, the judge notably disagreed with Trump’s arguments that there was a “callous disregard” for his constitutional rights regarding the search.
Jessica Levinson: Judge’s ruling on Trump’s special master request reads more like a political conclusion in search of a legal rationale than a judicial order. https://t.co/adGbyXFqA8
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 6, 2022
Trump AG Bill Barr says judge’s decision to appoint a special master to review documents FBI seized from Mar-A-Lago was “wrong and…it’s deeply flawed in a number of ways.” https://t.co/JrrP1a3fTP pic.twitter.com/9s485QJg1K
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 6, 2022
Cannon seemed to have understood the skepticism Trump’s lawyers raised about the search of the resort, as they questioned whether investigators could really be trusted to read through the thousands of taken documents. The judge rejected the Justice Department’s assurances that its “internal filter team had already sorted out materials that could be subject to attorney-client privileges,” the publication indicated.
Ultimately, the main takeaway from this is that while the special master appointment may lead to a delay into the federal investigation of the Mar-a-Lago documents, this now brings about more uncertainty regarding the investigation. One other significant piece of information is that Trump, 76, did not gain everything he wanted from the special master, as Cannon did not rule that any of the seized documents would be returned to him, as he expressed he wished for this.
