Appeals Court strikes down Special Master nonsense, clears way for DOJ to indict Donald Trump
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals just struck down Judge Aileen Cannon’s entire Special Master ruling. This is a huge win for the DOJ, and a huge loss for Donald Trump. This means that the DOJ now immediately gets to work through all of the evidence that it seized from Trump’s home, and gets to make its own decisions about what is or is not privileged ahead of indictment.
Trump can still appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court. But the last time the 11th Circuit overturned Cannon, the Supreme Court immediately said it had no interest in the case. So there is every reason to expect the same thing to happen again, if Trump even bothers to try appealing to the Supreme Court this time. Such an appeal wouldn’t buy him more than about a week, and realistically wouldn’t buy him any time at all, because the DOJ would get to keep moving forward while the Supreme Court spends a week deciding not to take up the case.
The DOJ still has work to do. But it finally has full access to everything it wanted access to. Now it just has to work through it. This Special Master nonsense was the biggest remaining hurdle to indicting Trump, and now it’s gone.
It’s probably worth pointing out that this Special Master nonsense has nothing at all to do with recently appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith. These are two entirely different things that just happen to both have the word “Special” in their name.
In any case, the DOJ and the Special Counsel are now in a position to criminally indict Donald Trump on their timetable, and not the timetable of Trump or any of his stooges. We’re not going to try to predict whether it’ll happen before or after the holidays. But it’s coming soon enough. Today’s landmark ruling is one of the final pieces of the puzzle.
