Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Team Trump just got destroyed by judges he appointed as all three Republican picks on the 11th Circuit panel overseeing his case on the Mar-a-Lago document special master ordered Judge Aileen Cannon's previous decision vacated.

The three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order appointing a so-called special master to sort through thousands of documents found at Trump’s home to determine what should be off limits to investigators.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote. “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.”

The 11th Circuit said that either approach would be a “radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and that “both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

The opinion – which was issued jointly by the three-judge panel made up of all GOP appointees – dismantled Trump’s arguments for why a special master was necessary. The court said that only in extraordinary circumstances should courts intervene in Justice Department investigations that are still in their early stages, and that standard had not been met here.

“This restraint guards against needless judicial intrusion into the course of criminal investigations—a sphere of power committed to the executive branch,” the court wrote.

The ruling is a stinging rebuke of how Cannon inserted herself into the dispute. In addition to reversing the order, the appeals court is instructing her to dismiss the entire case.

The appeals court said that its new ruling will go into effect in seven days, unless a party in the case successfully seeks an order – known as a stay – pausing the ruling from going into effect while it is appealed.

 

Ahh, but that last part means Trump and the Roberts Court have a week to reinstate the order and take the case. We'll see if the Shadow Docket™ acts and puts the case in limbo for the next 8 months. After all, this is the court that decided to overturn precedent in Dobbs and turn half the country into wards of the states they are in. You think it won't protect Trump from legal peril at the federal level for as long as it can?