Jessica Levinson: Judge's ruling on Trump's special master request reads more like a political conclusion in search of a legal rationale than a judicial order.
At each step of the way, Cannon’s often dubious legal conclusions add up to a political win for Trump and dangerous precedent for our criminal justice system. First, Cannon concluded that she had jurisdiction to rule on Trump’s request for a special master, deciding that she possessed something called equitable jurisdiction, which she admitted is reserved only for “exceptional circumstances.”
Cannon first concluded that Trump “has an individual interest in and need for the seized property” because the documents the FBI obtained included a few “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes, and accounting information,” and also information potentially subject to the attorney-client privilege. But this reasoning misses the point.
And again, the magistrate judge granted the search warrant here so the DOJ could search for and obtain documents which, if mishandled, threaten our national security. But sure, let’s allow Trump to halt this entire investigation based on a small number of personal documents that were validly obtained by the DOJ.
Cannon, in her continued fretting over Trump’s reputation, focuses on “wrongful indictment[s],” and reminds us that “as a function of Plaintiff’s former position as President of the United States, the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own.”The meat of Trump’s claim, of course, is that he is entitled to a special master to make determinations as to whether the documents the FBI found at Mar-a-Lago are covered by an evidentiary privilege.
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