Aileen Cannon, without explaining why she was intervening, just rewrote Judge Raymond Dearie’s work plans regarding the Special Master review. This was effectively a de novo review before Dearie issued his final decision in the matter.
With no justification (particularly given the way Dearie has ceded to multiple issues Trump has raised), and after having been scolded by the 11th Circuit for her improper claims of jurisdiction, she effectively just eliminated any claim that the Special Master Trump picked and she appointed is a neutral observer.
Altogether she:
- Excused Trump from having to lodge challenges to the inventory (while misrepresenting the current deadlines for doing so)
- Accepted Trump’s claims about the timing of vendors even though DOJ assumed that part of the task
- Bought Trump’s dodgy claim there are 200,000 pages of documents before DOJ could lodge a correction
- Ignored Trump’s own hints they missed the one deadline they’ve faced so far
- Invented claims about how long it took DOJ to conduct an initial review
- Extended her own deadlines to make sure that nothing would happen until after midterms
- Claimed (even after the 11th Circuit said differently) that there was no jurisdictional dispute over Rule 41(g) motions
I’ll further substantiate these details tomorrow.
It’s an obvious power grab to ensure her own intervention doesn’t backfire on Trump.
Nothing is surprising about this. It’s not even surprising how shamelessly she has intervened.
The only matter of suspense is how honestly reporters will report this naked power grab.