Appeals court rules Trump-appointed judge 'improperly' ordered special master trends now
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The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a harsh rebuke to Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, ordering she erred when she named a 'special master' to sort through government documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel halts the review of hundreds of classified and other documents seized during an FBI raid of the president's private club amid a Justice Department probe.
It constitutes a significant win for the Justice Department, whose lawyers bristled at the original decision and already succeeded in allowing the government to use seized classified documents in its ongoing investigation.
'The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so,' wrote the court.