U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon astounded legal experts with a broad-brush order requiring a special master to review the government documents recovered by the FBI in its search of Mar-a-Lago last month and halting for now the agency’s investigation.
Cannon, 41, a judge in the Southern District of Florida and like most recent Republican appointees a member of the right-wing Federalist Society, went far beyond where judges have gone before. One critic, New York University law professor Chris Sprigman, aptly called it “partisan hack judging.”
She has unnecessarily delayed the Justice Department investigation of Trump’s theft of documents belonging to the National Archives and his casual mishandling of some records so highly classified that their contents cannot be described to the public.
Trump’s initial defense that he had declassified these incredibly sensitive documents — with news reports describing the contents as a military assessment of a foreign power’s nuclear defenses and potentially exposing spies for the CIA — was laughable on its face.
Her order reeks not just of bad judging but of inappropriate sympathies to a potential criminal defendant. She referred to “exceptional circumstances.” What’s exceptional is, she’s giving unique considerations to a former president who should be no more above the law than any other citizen.
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Hypnotized / Linda Jones
