Trump-Appointed Lawyer Shows How Unqualified She Is

Elie Mystal, an attorney and legal reporter for The Nation, accused a Trump-appointed judge of bias and corruption Monday after she appointed a special master to review documents seized from his home by the FBI.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, nominated by Trump in 2020, made the move over the objections of the Justice Department, which is investigating Trump for allegedly harboring unsecured classified material at Mar-a-Lago.

Judge Aileen Cannon stunned legal experts, along with those who have even a passing understanding of applicable law, by granting Donald Trump’s request to appoint a “special master” to review the documents taken during an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago that took place on Aug. 8. Not only did Cannon grant Trump everything he wished for, she went beyond his request to grant an injunction instructing the Department of Justice to suspend use of the records for investigative purposes.

“How on Earth could a judge who made it through law school think that Donald Trump can take the property of the government, the federal government, take it home and then have to have a special master decide whether they can investigate him?” Joy Reid asked Mystal on her MSNBC show.

To which Mystal replied: “Because she’s biased and corrupt. ... I’ve been saying this since he took office: When you allow Republicans to control the courts, you get nothing. Trump judges do not believe in the rule of law. They do not believe in precedent. They do not believe in facts. They do not believe in logic. They just believe in whatever’s going to help Donald Trump and they’ve proven it again and again and again. So when I say you cannot trust Trump judges I don’t know what more evidence you need for that fact.”   Mystal dismissed Trump’s claim of executive privilege. “Privilege goes to the current president,” he said. “We only have one president at a time. So it’s not Trump’s privilege to have.”

As former FBI agent and attorney Asha Rangappa notes, this injunction was created from whole cloth by Cannon in her decision. Trump’s attorneys did not ask for an injunction, but Cannon “did Trump’s lawyers’ work for them.” In her ruling, Cannon ignores the law, ignores precedent, ignores procedure, and ignores the government’s response. 

There are purposeful lies/distortions/misreadings of law that Cannon builds into her ruling in order to grant Trump what he wanted and then some. Among them, Cannon:

• Claims that President Biden hasn’t weighed in on whether the documents are protected by executive privilege when the letter from the National Archives makes it clear that he has.
• Supports the idea that Trump can declare items privileged after leaving office, and backs this with a definitive misstatement of Supreme Court rulings concerning Nixon.
• Invents the idea that Trump requires a special master because of that possibility of “reputational harm,” including citing how knowledge that he had been searched might hurt Trump, even though Trump was the first to confirm that a search took place.
• Creates the whole idea that a special master can review documents for executive privilege without providing any clue about how that would proceed, and without Trump naming a single document as protected.
• Gives an example of some materials that might be subject to attorney-client privilege, then declares that the whole investigation has to be halted even though those documents represent a tiny fraction of the total and have already been filtered out by the privilege team at the FBI.
• Ignores the fact that Trump does not own any of the documents, either classified or unclassified, that fall under the Presidential Records Act and treats them all as if Trump is the sole owner, which she uses to justify the special master appointment.
• Claims that the Department of Justice has admitted they took material with “no evidentiary value,” which is a complete distortion not found in any Department of Justice filing. 

Most experts are predicting this to be appealed swiftly to the 11th circuit court.  The quicker the better. Unfortunately, Cannon will be sitting on the bench until she retires (or is removed, whichever comes first).