Judge Aileen Cannon’s rulings that President Trump does not have to defend his assertion that materials were “planted” at Mar-a-Lago by the FBI and that he is not bound by the timeline imposed by the special master are reminders that his greatest strength in this case could be the judge hearing it. 

Those rulings were conveyed in an order released by Judge Cannon on Thursday afternoon. She held that “there shall be no separate requirement on Plaintiff at this stage” to “lodge ex ante final objections to the accuracy of Defendant’s Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents.” That means that any dispute as to the origins of the documents is now moot. 

The special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, had agreed with the Department of Justice that Mr. Trump was obligated to defend in court his assertion to television host Sean Hannity that the government had dropped evidence “into those piles” carted off from Mar-a-Lago. On his Truth Social platform, Mr. Trump had posed the question in reference to the search: “Planting information anyone?”

Mr. Trump’s attorneys had claimed that Judge Dearie’s order signaled that the “management plan exceeds the grant of authority from the district court on this issue.” Judge Cannon agreed, though she also instructed the Trump team to label each box with the species of privilege they believe it enjoys.  

However, those determinations will now be due after the midterm elections, rather than on a rolling basis as Judge Dearie requested. Judge Cannon also extended the deadline for Judge Dearie’s review of the Mar-a-Lago trove — which numbers more than 200,000 pages — via what she called a “modest enlargement” to December 16 from November 30.