Thursday 29 September 2022 11:50 PM Judge Aileen Cannon rules that Trump does NOT have to vouch for the accuracy of ... trends now
District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has ruled in favor of Donald Trump's after his lawyers sought to avoid a special master's requirement that they vouch for the accuracy of an inventory of material the government seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Another judge, special master Raymond Dearie, had told Trump's lawyers to provide the assertion as part of a new management plan for poring over the trove of documents.
That order came as Trump and some of his surrogates have repeatedly claimed that the FBI planted material at his private club in Florida during the search, without providing evidence.
It would have required his legal team to either align with or depart from that claim, with their own reputations on the line.
In her new order, Judge Cannon wrote: 'There shall be no separate requirement on Plaintiff (Trump) at this stage, prior to the review of any of the Seized Materials, to lodge ... objections to the accuracy of Defendant’s Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents.'
Former President Donald Trump's lawyers are resisting a special master's push that they vouched for an inventory of the material seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon ruled
'The Court’s Appointment Order did not contemplate that obligation,' she wrote, noting that the government has complied with its own requirement to attest to the inventory and that 'the parties and the Special Master now are situated to proceed forward with the review process pending exchange of the actual materials.'
She did allow that should 'additional matters surface' during the review that required reconsideration of the inventory, parties should tell the special master.
She also extended a deadline for reviewing the deadline until December 16, well after the November elections, yielding to Trump complaints about the pace of review.
Trump's team had tried to avoid the requirement of objecting to anything in the inventory, or stating explicitly that Trump didn't have it in his possession, saying it needed to look at the documents first. The government argued 'such an objection is necessary to commence the review process,' Judge Cannon noted.
Cannon, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed after the 2020 election, ruled in the government's favor on another matter in the intensely fought case.
She ruled that the government could seal its Affidavit Regarding Detailed Inventory.
The government's National Security Division Deputy Chief Julie Edelstein filed a motion seeking the redaction, saying it 'will protect the identity of an FBI agent working on this investigation. This limited sealing is necessary because a number of the government personnel working on this investigation have, once their identities have been revealed publicly, been subject to threats and harassment.'
She ruled in favor of the motion, and said the affidavit would remain under seal 'until further order.'
The rulings came after Trump's legal team complains in a new legal filing about the pace of sorting through 200,000 pages of material seized from Mar-a-Lago – and made plain it was resisting the order asking the former president to vouch for the accuracy of the inventory.
Trump's team takes repeated shots at the government in its latest filing posted Wednesday night, as the 'special master' it requested shepherds the process of going through materials seized in an FBI search.
A three judge U.S. appeals court has ruled that the Justice Department's investigation can continue while the special master goes through material to sort out Trump's privilege
