A decision Monday by a federal judge granting former President Donald Trump’s request for an independent review of the FBI’s seizure of documents at Mar-a-Lago last month has prompted an unusually forceful backlash within the legal community. It isn’t just partisan analysts who are reacting with dismay; criticism of Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision has been widespread.
I’ll leave the specific ways that the decision fell short to legal specialists. But suffice to say there were a lot. The good news is that the judge’s decision has been so widely faulted that it could encourage media to resist the common temptation to hear out “both sides” of the argument when one side is so evidently flawed. The ruling also could motivate some Republican judges to shy away from hard-line decisions in order to avoid being labeled partisan — that is, nothing but apologists for their party and for Trump.
The “neutral” media — outlets that think of themselves as neutral, and try hard to have their coverage reflect that — have many real biases, and one of them is a strong inclination to treat conflicts between the two main political parties as having two reasonable sides that reasonable people differ on, with the media’s job being to present both sides equally.
