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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Comment
Laurence H Tribe and Phillip Allen Lacovara

The Trump judge ruling on the Mar-a-Lago affair is defying established law

Donald Trump<br>FILE - President Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as President in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump continues to stoke the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen, and even now advocates for the results in certain battleground states to be decertified even though the falsehood has been rejected by dozens of courts and his own attorney general. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
‘Judge Cannon’s wholesale assumption that all 11,000 documents are presumptively within a narrow privilege for confidential presidential communications is unfounded’ Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Judge Aileen Cannon’s two rulings in the Mar-a-Lago affair offer a master class in illustrating how a young and ideologically-driven judge can badly bungle important issues of law and public policy and distort the proper role of courts in protecting state secrets and supervising criminal investigations. The Justice Department, wisely, is appealing.

The catalogue of errors and abuses is too long for a single column, so we touch only on the low points.

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