Earlier today, we reported on the sickening news that federal judge Aileen Cannon has now officially authorized the appointment of a special master to review the records, documents, and materials that were seized from Donald Trump’s country club. To make matters that much worse, Cannon also temporarily blocked the Department of Justice from reviewing the seized materials or using any of the documents for the purpose of their investigation. This ruling will remain in effect until such a time that the special master has completed their review of the materials, or a further court order has been put into place.
Cannon noted in her filing that both Trump’s claims of executive privilege as well as attorney-client privilege are now on the table for review by the to-be-appointed special master on the case.
What some may not know, is that Judge Cannon was appointed to her position by Donald J. Trump.
While Cannon’s disappointing ruling will almost undoubtedly be challenged by the Department of Justice, Berkeley Law Professor Jonah Glbach is now out with a thorough explanation of the situation and analysis pointing to obstruction of justice committed by the federal judge herself.
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In his in-depth Twitter thread on the matter, Glbach writes, “Cannon has entered a temporary injunction restraining the government from review or use of the items seized from Mar-a-Lago for ‘criminal investigative purposes.'” This move on Cannon’s part brings the DOJ’s investigation to a complete stop, for the time being, and certainly dismantles any chances of an impending indictment against Donald Trump, for so long as the order remains in place.
Glbach makes note of the fact that Cannon outlined four specific elements that must be established by the ex-president in order to obtain the injunction, before pointing out that Cannon herself found that Trump did not have some of them.
“Her basis for finding ‘a’ likelihood is, she says, contained in part III of her Discussion, at pages 14-18,” the law professor writes. “But part III is full of couched language like ‘arguably’ and ‘the Court is not convinced’ and ‘evidence from which to call that premise into question.'”
Glbach openly wondered how on earth the verbiage “likelihood” could be utilized in a federal court ruling. “In sum, Judge Cannon *correctly (sic) stated the legal requirement of a substantial likelihood *then declared only that she’d found ‘a likelihood,’ based on a discussion in which she makes no such finding, repeatedly indicating uncertainty about the merits of the review process. That alone looks like [an] abuse of discretion and thus reversible error to me. I assume that will be one point in DOJ’s inevitable appeal of the preliminary injunction to CA11.”
Attorney Ken White, who goes by “PopeHat” on Twitter, weighed in, writing, “This is one of the strongest critiques — that the order doesn’t address the threshold issue of how executive privilege applies against executive inquiry.”
“Even if the order isn’t a catastrophe, I think the observation that the court bent over backwards for Trump on every issue is a fair assessment,” he added.
White went on to state that the portions of the court ruling that he believes are “freakout” worthy are also the same parts that he feels will serve as reason for appeal.
“Those would include (a) the identity of the special master, (b) the scope of their assignment, (c) her further orders ruling on the special master’s findings, (d) 11th circuit or SCOTUS emergency action,” White penned in his Twitter thread, making a clear note to MAGA Republicans who are celebrating this move as an end to the investigation — they are wildly ill-informed and, frankly, dead wrong.
“The judge shut down, for now, [the] review of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. The criminal investigation existed before that and will continue on other channels as before,” White blistered.
Meanwhile, American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein said exactly what we were all thinking, the moment that the news broke this morning: Cannon never should have taken on the case, to begin with.
“It was in the hands of the magistrate judge, she was picked by Trump’s lawyers solely because she was a Trumpist, in a jurisdiction nowhere near Mar-a-Lago. She has an effect engaged herself in obstruction of justice,” Ornstein theorized.
Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas Law School, Steve Vladeck, dubbed Cannon’s ruling “preposterous,” before specifically pointing to “the part where it blocks the government from continuing to use materials already in its possession. At the very least, that last ruling creates an immediately appealable injunctive-like order, which DOJ can now take to the Eleventh Circuit.”
The whole ordeal was labeled “Crazytown” by former acting Solicitor General Neal Kayal, while former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance echoed that sentiment.
However, the most brutal, dismantling takedown of them all was served up by none other than former prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, who blistered, “I truly hoped Judge Cannon would adhere to the rule of law, but she in fact is now another illustration of the insidiousness of Trump and the Big Lie. And how he has infected formerly mainstream Republicans.”
Frankly, there is nothing we can add to that.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
