A Trump-appointed Florida federal judge who previously selected a special master in the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago investigation might now oversee the criminal case brought against former President Donald Trump by special counsel Jack Smith.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a district court judge in Florida who gave Trump a temporary win when she appointed Judge Raymond Dearie to be the special master in the Mar-a-Lago saga in September, has been assigned to oversee the criminal case against Trump in southern Florida, according to multiple outlets. Dearie was picked by Cannon to be the short-lived special master after his name was put forward by Trump.
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Trump revealed Thursday evening that Smith, who was hand-picked by Attorney General Merrick Garland, had informed him he was being indicted related to his alleged mishandling of classified records and that he had been summoned to appear in a Miami federal courthouse on Tuesday afternoon.
Cannon was nominated by Trump to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in May 2020, and she was confirmed by the Senate in November 2020. If she remains the overseer of Trump’s criminal case, this means she could oversee a jury trial and be empowered to decide what prison sentence Trump would receive if convicted.
Cannon ruled in September that she “temporarily enjoins the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.”
She said at the time that her ruling “shall not impede” the classification review and intelligence assessment being conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence related to the records seized in the FBI’s unprecedented August raid of Trump’s Florida resort home. Nevertheless, an ODNI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner in September it had “paused” the classification review following consultation with federal prosecutors.
Cannon’s own pause on the DOJ’s use of classified documents was then reversed by an appeals court later in September, and the entire special master process was tossed out by a higher court in December.
Trump said he had been summoned to appear at the federal courthouse in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m. The former president is believed to face at least seven criminal charges, although the indictment has not been unsealed.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump posted on his Truth Social social media site Thursday evening, declaring, “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
DOJ prosecutors opposed the selection of a special master and were especially annoyed by Cannon’s ruling that the Justice Department had to pause its investigative activities related to many of the seized records while Dearie reviewed them.
The Justice Department quickly claimed last year that any delay in the criminal investigation into Trump and Mar-a-Lago could put U.S. national security at risk and argued that the FBI’s criminal investigation and the intelligence community’s assessment “cannot be readily segregated” from each other.
Dearie suggested to the former president’s lawyers during a September hearing that Trump must provide evidence of declassification, or else the judge may have to assume the records seized by the FBI are indeed classified.
Trump’s attorneys told Dearie at the time that they were hesitant about detailing what Trump may have declassified because that topic might end up being part of their defense against a future indictment by the DOJ.
Trump lawyer Jim Trusty said Thursday night Trump had received a summons, rather than a charging document, and that “it breaks down to the retention charge, obstruction, and false statement,” adding, “I think there is a conspiracy count.”
Trusty said that one charge related to 18 U.S.C. 793, part of the Espionage Act, which the FBI’s August search warrant said was related to “willful retention of national defense information.”
The Trump lawyer said there were also “several” obstruction charges related to 18 U.S.C. 1512, which deals with “tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant,” and related to 18 U.S.C. 1519, which deals with “destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations.”
Smith is known to have convened grand juries in the nation’s capital and in southern Florida, with the Florida grand jury reportedly receiving testimony on the classified documents saga in recent days. Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has reportedly testified before one of Smith’s grand juries. It is still possible that charges could be handed down in both districts.
Trump’s legal team unsuccessfully sought to defend the special master order last year.
“This investigation of President Trump by the administration of his political rival is both unprecedented and misguided,” the former president’s legal team argued to the appeals court. “Recognizing the exceptional circumstances, President Trump’s interest in the seized materials, the potential irreparable injury, and the lack of any other remedy, the District Court exercised appropriately its equitable jurisdiction.”
Trump’s lawyers added: “Given the significance of this investigation, it must be conducted in a manner that gives the public confidence in its outcome. The Court should simply not allow the Government to cloak these proceedings from public view based on its unverified assertions. The Special Master — and the District Court — should not be inhibited from exercising the jurisdiction afforded to them.”
The trio of appeals court judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit who tossed out the special master entirely in December were Trump appointees Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher, who also sided with the Justice Department against the former president in another special master ruling in September, and George W. Bush appointee William Pryor, the chief judge of the court.
The appeals judges sided with the Justice Department’s appeal of the special master selection late last year, writing, “In considering these arguments, we are faced with a choice: apply our usual test; drastically expand the availability of equitable jurisdiction for every subject of a search warrant; or carve out an unprecedented exception in our law for former presidents. We choose the first option. So the case must be dismissed.”
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Grant and Brasher, as well as Obama-appointee Robin Rosenbaum, also unanimously sided with the DOJ in September when they agreed with the DOJ that Cannon had “likely erred” in her ruling to pause the DOJ’s criminal investigation and when she had required prosecutors to allow Dearie independently to scrutinize the roughly 100 documents with classified markings that had been seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Smith’s investigation against Trump was able to proceed more swiftly and unimpeded after the special master was swept away.
