Donald Trump had a win all lined up, or so we thought.
He literally had his judge on the case who had already expressed her intent to grant his request for a special master.
Then they appeared in court, and Judge Cannon decided to slow things down just a bit.
What?
I know Trump's legal team thought they were coming out of court with a big win.
The idea here was to have a special master appointed that would hopefully find more privileged documents than the DOJ had said it found.
That would have been a crushing blow to Merrick Garland, but Cannon flipped.
Cannon has not ruled against a special master being appointed, but she did delay her ruling.
She stated that after hearing both sides, she will issue a written ruling with her final decision "in due course."
From the transcripts, it still appears that she will rule in favor of Trump, which will set off the DOJ.
I say this because if a special master is appointed, that means the case against Trump has the brakes put on it until the appointee can go through every document still in possession by the DOJ.
Judge Cannon hinted at that, stating, "What is the harm of appointing a special master?
"What is your articulation of harm other than the general concern that it would delay a criminal investigation?"
Trump attorney Christopher Kise asked for a bit of calmness to take place in the proceedings, and maybe just a dash of common sense.
He stated, "We need to take a deep breath. These are presidential records in the hands of the 45th president at a place which was used frequently for work during his presidency."
DOJ prosecutor Julie Edelstein shot back, "Some of those records included the most highly classified records in the U.S. There was no place at that property [Mar-a-Lago] that was authorized for those records."
Yet, the documents were there when Trump was president, so…
If Cannon does rule in favor of Trump, it would be weeks, possibly months before there was any progress on the documents being reviewed.
My understanding is that both sides would submit lists of possible appointees, and those people must have a top-level security clearance in order to be able to review the documents.
The final party would have to be agreed upon by both sides.
That process alone could take weeks to hammer out, so this is something we are probably going to see in the news cycle for the next several months.
Source: Fox News
