Critically important and informative NY Times (November 22, 2022) story with this headline (formatted to fit the blog):
“Court
Appears Ready to End Special Master Review in Trump Files Inquiry”
A federal appeals court
panel signaled on Tuesday (November 22) that it is likely to end a review of a trove of
government documents seized this summer from Trump, a move that would greatly
free up the DOJ's criminal investigation into Trump's handling of the highly-classified material.
At a 40-minute hearing in Atlanta, the three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit seemed to embrace the DOJ position that federal Judge Aileen Cannon had acted improperly two months ago when she ordered an independent arbiter to review the documents taken from Trump’s Florida compound at Mar-a-Lago.
Through their questions,
the panel expressed concern that when Cannon appointed Special Master Judge Raymond
Dearie, that Cannon had acted without
precedent by ordering a review of the seized materials.
The panel also suggested
that Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, had overstepped by inserting
herself into the case and trying to bar the government from using the records
in its investigation into whether Trump had illegally kept national
security records at Mar-a-Lago and obstructed the government’s repeated efforts
to retrieve them.
The hearing was the latest development in the protracted
legal fight over Trump’s handling of nearly 13,000 government documents and
photographs, including some that were marked as highly classified (TS/SCI).
It came days after the DOJ appointed a special
counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee both the documents investigation and a
separate inquiry into Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election with the January
6 attack on the Nation’s Capitol.
During the proceeding in Atlanta, all of the judges on the
panel, two of whom were Trump appointees, appeared to support the DOJ’s overarching
argument that Cannon’s appointment of the special master and her efforts
to keep the government from using the documents seized from Trump were highly
unusual and wrongly decided.
Lawyers for the DOJ told the panel there was no precedent for Judge Cannon to have interfered in a case in which charges had not even been filed.
Then the DOJ lawyers also
argued that Judge Cannon should not have gotten involved because no evidence
existed that the search of Mar-a-Lago had been unlawful.
Trump lawyer, Jim Trusty, tried to sidestep that question, suggesting that the Trump legal team may still offer claims that the search was unlawful and noted that a “raid” of a former president’s home was itself unprecedented.
Britt Grant, another Trump-appointed judge, interrupted attorney Trusty and objected to his use of the word “raid to describe the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago.
Judge Grant also noted that many targets of search warrants
believe the government overreached in their cases and urged Trusty to explain
why Trump’s situation was different from that of any other subject of a
criminal investigation. Trusty had no answer and also could not explain that.
The third judge on the panel, William Pryor Jr., an appointee of former President George W. Bush, also appeared inclined to rule against Trump.
Judge Pryor spent much of his time during the hearing questioning a DOJ lawyer about whether the best way to get rid of the special master’s review would be to vacate Judge Cannon’s order or to simply reverse it.
Noteworthy: None of the judges
asked any skeptical questions of the DOJ legal team
My 2 cents: Based on the above story and other sources on this topic, I would have to say that Trump and Cannon are both toast.
But, as usual we will have to wait and see, still it’s my hunch.
Stay tuned and thanks for
stopping by.
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