Florida judge appoints special master and tries to weasel out of being reversed on appeal

I read the judge's order so you don't have to. It turns out she's more clever than we thought

Predictably, Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida yesterday rejected the DOJ’s motion to exclude 100 classified documents from her previous order barring their use by FBI investigators.  She then appointed retired Brooklyn Judge Raymond Dearie as a special master to review all the documents Trump removed from the White House.  She gave Dearie until November 30 to complete his work and, surprisingly, ordered that Trump bear all the costs of the special master’s work.

The DOJ had asked Judge Cannon to lift her order with respect to the 100 classified documents the FBI seized from Mar a Lago on August 8, making the argument that because they bear classified markings, they are clearly the property of the government, and that Trump has no “possessory interest in them.”  Cannon rejected this argument, writing “In many respects, the Government’s position thus presupposes the content, designation and associated interests in materials under its control—yet, as the parties’ competing filings reveal, there are disputes as to the proper designation of the seized materials, the legal implications flowing from those designations, and the intersecting bodies of law permeating those designations.”

In human-speak, the judge is, incredibly, questioning whether the 100 documents in question are indeed classified, thus buying into Trump’s public allegation that he “globally declassified” all the documents he took to Mar a Lago. Trump’s lawyers, however, sidestepped saying that Trump had declassified the documents, so Judge Cannon is apparently paying more attention to Trump’s public statements than to his lawyer’s briefs.

But here’s where it gets interesting.  Perhaps aware that on appeal her acceptance of Trump’s assertions will hold significantly less weight than the government’s own classification markings on the documents in question, Judge Cannon then proceeded to give the DOJ pretty much everything it asked for, albeit in a back-handed fashion.