https://www.newsweek.com-By Nick Reynolds
Former President Donald Trump is seen at the White House on July 22, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Attorneys representing the Department of Justice will likely soon get their hands on a number of classified documents necessary to bring charges against Trump, legal observers contend, after a judge’s ruling removed a Trump-appointed arbiter that could have withheld those documents from evidence in a trial against him. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Attorneys representing the Department of Justice (DOJ) will likely soon get their hands on a number of classified documents necessary to bring charges against former President Donald Trump, legal observers contend, after a judge’s ruling removed a Trump-appointed arbiter that could have withheld those documents from evidence in a trial against him.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon signed an order from a Trump-appointed judge formally reversing a ruling she’d previously made allowing a Trump-selected reviewer, Raymond Dearie, to play referee in a case accusing the former president of improperly removing dozens of classified documents before leaving the White House last year.
Trump’s attorneys have said the ex-president was subject to executive privilege in the case, and therefore subject to different rules around his ability to access classified material as well as for what purpose. Cannon, initially, agreed, and under her order, gave Dearie the authority to review and then decide which of the documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home by the FBI—many of which allegedly contain highly sensitive intelligence—could be used as evidence against him in court.
Many, however, disagreed Trump was still subject to executive privilege after leaving the White House. Cannon’s formal action to comply with the higher court’s ruling, they said, reflects that opinion.
“This is sweet vindication for those of us who analyzed from the start this day would come for the rule of law,” attorney Norm Eisen, who also serves as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, tweeted in response to the action on Monday. “It also means Trump is once again on the fast track to prosecution.”
The ability to withhold some documents from review was critical to Trump’s defense. Because of his political visibility—and his current campaign for the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 2024—President Joe Biden‘s DOJ has treaded very carefully around the prospect of bringing charges against Trump, working to ensure all evidence is in place before pursuing criminal proceedings.
Politics have notably gummed up progress in the case. If it were anyone else accused of a similar crime, former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said on The Legal Breakdown over the weekend, that the DOJ would have gotten its search warrant, searched the property and recovered all of the classified documents it could find, arrested the perpetrator (in this case Trump) and then continue the investigation to see if it could get more search warrants and recover more documents.
“They didn’t do that. Why? Because they treated Donald Trump differently than every other person who might steal classified documents,” Kirschner said. “They put them a little above the law and that is why they find themselves in this mess.”
Trump and some of his associates have maintained—without clear evidence—that he declassified some of the documents and did nothing wrong before leaving the White House, though figures like Kirschner have opined it is already clear Trump committed crimes regardless of the documents’ classification.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the federal government have sought to not only challenge the validity of the claim, but to be able to make the case that the material Trump removed from the White House should never have been, and that the intelligence contained within them remains relevant to world affairs: a task made slightly easier now that Trump is unable to withhold the documents in-question from evidence.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors asked a judge to hold the former president’s office in contempt for allegedly failing to fully comply with a May subpoena to return all the classified documents. The contempt request was reportedly made, in part, because none of Trump’s attorneys or advisers were willing to accept the legal responsibility of being a custodian of records for the former president, making Trump potentially face being fined every day until the documents were returned.
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s office for comment.