9/7/2022

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS/DOJ/FBI: “Monday’s decision by a US federal judge to stop the investigation of Donald Trump’s seizure of classified documents until a ‘special master’ reviews them has thrown the political and legal worlds into uproar – pitting those who believe the ex-president has special legal privileges against those who think he should be treated like any other citizen.

The procedural victory for Trump means the Department of Justice will have to press pause on its effort to determine whether the former president may have illegally run off with classified documents from the White House and kept them at his home in Mar-a-Lago.

Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, agreed to his request that a special master, a kind of independent mediator, review the roughly 11,000 documents that the FBI discovered and seized when it searched Mar-a-Lago last month…

The justice department can appeal Cannon’s ruling, but the court of appeals that would probably hear the appeal is heavily dominated by Trump-appointed judges. Cannon herself was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2020.”

-J Oliver Conroy, “Why did a judge grant Trump’s request for a ‘special master’?,” theguardian.com, September 7, 2022