Cannon, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate a few week after his defeat in 2020, mentioned she plans to carry a listening to Thursday in West Palm Seaside on the previous president’s request for a particular grasp. She usually convenes court docket in Fort Pierce, Fla., about an hour’s drive north of there.
The decide’s two-page order giving “discover of [her] preliminary intent to nominate a particular grasp on this case” got here lower than a day after Trump’s attorneys late Friday made a pitch for an unbiased evaluation of the supplies seized from his Mar-a-Lago property and earlier than prosecutors filed any reply.
Cannon gave no indication how she considered Trump’s claims that the search was pointless and excessive. As a substitute, she requested Trump to file a quick responding to the Justice Division’s produced checklist of seized supplies. She additionally requested each side to explain particularly the function they envision for a particular grasp. And she or he requested DOJ to disclose the standing of its filter evaluation, and whether or not any investigators exterior of the evaluation crew had seen the seized supplies.
The Division of Justice declined to touch upon the ruling.
Appointments of particular masters to supervise the dealing with of proof seized in federal felony investigations are uncommon, however usually have occurred when prosecutors seize data from an lawyer’s workplace. Judges in Manhattan used the mechanism in recent times in reference to investigations into two Trump attorneys: Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani.