Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon stunned legal experts again on Thursday after siding with Donald Trump by overruling the special master she appointed to review thousands of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, shielding the former president from addressing his claims that documents may have been “planted” or “declassified” in court.
Dearie had given Trump a Sept. 30 deadline to attest to what was seized at Mar-a-Lago, but Cannon overruled that Trump would first have a chance to review the seized documents, which may include 200,000 pages.
That wasn’t the only way she delayed the case. She also set a new deadline of Oct. 5 to finalize a document review vendor, a step Dearie had hoped would have only taken one or two days.
“There shall be no separate requirement on Plaintiff at this stage, prior to the review of any of the Seized Materials, to lodge ex ante final objections to the accuracy of Defendant’s Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents. The Court’s Appointment Order did not contemplate that obligation,” Cannon wrote.
Legal experts rip the judge’s “profoundly partisan” pro-Trump ruling and for repeatedly intervening on his behalf.
“She’s an embarrassment to the federal judiciary,” wrote conservative attorney George Conway.
“Cannon’s latest order has neither law nor reason on its side,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. “Judges never micromanage special masters this way,” he said.
Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann wrote said that her ruling was “one more piece of evidence that she is completely unfit to serve on the bench.”
“What does Donald Trump have on Judge Cannon or her husband?” Weissmann wrote. “Something is SO off in her decisions (and the court of appeals said as much) that it is impossible not to ask this question in all seriousness.”
“It seems being slapped down herself by the 11th circuit didn’t make Judge Cannon any more circumspect,” Loyola Law Prof. Jessica Levinson wrote.
National security reporter Marcy Wheeler wrote, “holy hell this woman has no shame.” “Cannon is basically jumping up and down on a scale that her Special Master is supposed to still own. It is hilarious, corrupt, shameless, and obvious.”
