Come on Aileen
“Too hacky in favor of a Republican argument for 11CA” is one hell of a hard bar to get over but Aileen Cannon managed to pull it off:
A federal appeals court on Wednesday restored the Justice Department’s access to documents with classified markings that had been seized last month from former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence, handing a victory to federal investigators in their efforts to examine Mr. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government records.
In a strongly worded 29-page decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit blocked part of an order by a federal judge that had temporarily barred the department from using the classified materials in its inquiry into whether Mr. Trump illegally retained national defense documents and obstructed the government’s repeated efforts to recover them.
The Justice Department “argues that the district court likely erred in exercising its jurisdiction to enjoin the United States’ use of the classified records in its criminal investigation and to require the United States to submit the marked classified documents to a special master for review,” a three-judge panel wrote. “We agree.”
The panel had a majority of Trump nominees, in case you were wondering. In 2022, seeing actual law in the federal appellate courts is always a pleasant surprise.
I think you're being unfair to Cannon's critics. It seems to me that Judge Cannon lacked the legal authority to do what she did. And acting in violation of the law to be extra sensitive to one side raises concerns of unfairness, esp when that side recently gave you your job.— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) September 21, 2022