Here’s an article well-worth reading. In it, the Lawfare Blog explains the legal errors in U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s opinion which granted former President Trump’s request for appointment of a special master to review document seized when a search warrant was executed at Trump’s Mar a Lago resort (“Everything Wrong With Judge Cannon’s Ruling“).
This excerpt from the lead-in to the article gives you an idea of the issues detailed in the story.
Judge Cannon has been taking a bit of a beating all week for her decision. The criticism, some of it vituperative, has contained a lot of falsehoods and a considerable dollop of conspiracy theorizing, and it has often ascribed partisan motive for the ruling.
All of which might under normal circumstances tempt our contrarian hearts to try to defend the opinion.
But Cannon’s opinion actually defies defense. It is an epic mess, one that manages to do violence to a remarkable number of distinct areas of law in an admirable economy of only 24 pages.
The opinion is likely to be short lived—and, as such, might normally not be worth significant comment. As the constitutional scholar Charles Black once wrote, while “the insignificant error, however palpable, can stand, because the convenience of settlement outweighs the discomfort of error[,] the hugely consequential error cannot stand and does not stand.” Whether this opinion will be gone in a week or will take a little longer, it will very likely not stand.
That said, the decision is worth critiquing in depth not just because of its importance to one of the central news stories of the day but also because of the number of its errors, their magnitude, and their capacity for disruption of perhaps the highest-profile national security investigation in American history.
See:
‘Deeply Problematic’: Experts Question Judge’s Intervention in Trump Inquiry, NY Times, Sept. 5, 2022
“Legal scholars criticize judge’s ‘laughably bad’ ruling in favor of Trump ‘special master’ request,” TheWeek, Sept. 5, 2022
“A Ruling Untethered to the Law,” The Atlantic, Sept. 6, 2022
“Unclean hands and executive-privilege scope debated after judge requires special master in Trump case,” ABA Journal, Sept. 6, 2022
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As someone who likes to dig deeper into things, I wonder how many of the experts/magazines cited would have provided the same opinions if Hillary was found to have the same type of material/classified documents at her home and a special master was approved. Woud there the same outcry from these folks? I wonder how many of these scholars/legal professors etc. might have said disparaging things about Trump in the past and might be biased with their thoughts…
I doubt it.
Well, the immediate point is that Hilary Clington did not retain classified national security documents when she left her position as Secretary of State. And it should be no wonder that doing so prompted an investigation, as your hypothetical question itself confirms.
Incredulous…Incredulous…Incredulous!!!
I’m starting to believe that Trump is indeed every bit a GENIUS that he claims to be. How else do you explain his preternatural ability to avoid any jailtime plus significant fines that would dampen his penchant for dubious and fraudulent business endeavors? Or his ability to obtain favorable loans to keep his floating house of debt air-borne?
White Privilege? It’s like an endless cycle of Trump misdeeds playing across our electronic devices as sure as the clock widget tells the time.
RIco, sorry for color problems. It’s quite clear Trump is not White, He is vividly ORANGE!
None the less all humans descend from Lucy from Africa.
The short article does not hold a fraction of the prism raised by the greatly, more paged “Steel Dossier”. It’s almost as common as Christmas and New Years for the Annual Trump tales around the Left Lodges fires.
Does this mean January 6 and of course Russia have become history already. The shelf life of these “Epic,Violent, Earth Shattering” events are more common than the once common cold.
My god the great injustice of an impartial Special Master. In an Election Year, in contrast to other with a complete absence of a Hunter Biden Investigation, on the heels of a movie of the same to be released shortly. Simple the greatest irony of all time!
May the fires of Hell save you from a Supreme Court Appeal where a Trump Majority awaits His fate. You’ve simple have got to do a lot better than that.
They’ve got him this time!
https://www.pritchettcartoons.com/got-trump.htm
Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, was attacked by the FBI. But the left don’t want to know why. What happened to you guys? You really want to stop questioning government because of your narrative? Sad. Just ask the questions.
There’s no mystery in this search warrant. The broad investigation into false election claims, attempts to overturn election results including the January 6th events at the capital, is a very important one. The FBI’s investigation appears to have proceeded slowly at first, but now we’re seeing it moving along. The questions are being asked, and now apparently answered.