Court Tosses Special Master Review in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Documents Case

A federal appeals court on Thursday halted Judge Aileen Cannon’s special master review in President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents case.

In September, Judge Cannon appointed a special master to review the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.

Federal Judge Inclined to Grant Trump’s Request for Special Master in Mar-a-Lago Raid

However, the court criticized Judge Aileen Cannon and said she erred in appointing Raymond Dearie as a special master to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

“The law is clear,” the judges wrote.

“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.”

BREAKING: The 11th circuit has ruled that Judge Aileen Cannon's order appointing a special master and blocking the gov from using classified docs seized from Mar-a-Lago in their investigations was incorrect. The order has been vacated with instructions to dismiss the entire case. pic.twitter.com/jPl3QMNasx

— Daniel Barnes (@dnlbrns) December 1, 2022

Politico reported:

A federal appeals court panel has scrapped former President Donald Trump’s lawsuit aimed at derailing the FBI’s investigation of classified records stashed at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left the White House.

The three-judge panel’s unsparing ruling moves to shut down an outside review of the Justice Department’s use of nearly 3,000 documents the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August. And it deals Trump a devastating legal setback as he seeks to block the criminal probe into his purported retention of national security information, theft of government records and obstruction of justice.

The panel of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that U.S. district Court Judge Aileen Cannon erred both by granting Trump’s request to block investigators’ access to the records and in her decision to appoint a special master to assess Trump’s claims that some of the documents could be protected by executive privilege or other legal doctrines.

“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,” the three-judge panel wrote in a 21-page opinion released late Thursday afternoon. “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 courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

Trump can appeal the ruling to either the full bench of the 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court, but both prospects are seen as a long-shot. The panel gave Trump a week to decide what to do before its decision takes effect.

The decision, if it stands, gives a newly-named special counsel a free hand to return the investigation to full speed.