Judge Cannon orders hearing for Trump to challenge Mar-a-Lago search
Judge Cannon orders hearing for Trump to challenge Mar-a-Lago search
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon said Thursday that she will hold a hearing for Donald Trump’s lawyers to challenge some of the evidence gathered against him for alleged mishandling of classified documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.
In an 11-page order, the judge said that “further factual development is warranted” when it comes to Trump’s challenge to the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago — his Florida home and private club. FBI agents searched his home on Aug. 8, 2022, finding 103 classified documents that eventually led to his indictment.
The former president, who is the presumptive Republican challenger to President Biden in the November election, is seeking to suppress much of that evidence by arguing that the search warrant was faulty.
As part of her ruling, Cannon also said Trump’s defense lawyers were entitled to a hearing on whether prosecutors had misused statements by one of Trump’s former lawyers.
Cannon said she would shortly issue a separate order on when she will hear those issues in court.
Trump lawyer Emil Bove argued at hearings this week that an FBI agent’s affidavit providing probable cause for the search of Mar-a-Lago was too vague, particularly where it used the phrases “national defense information” and “presidential records” to describe the type of documents being sought. Cannon found that argument reasonable, and sufficient justification for an evidentiary hearing.
Special counsel Jack Smith had insisted that no further hearings on the subject were necessary because the search warrant and affidavit were exceedingly carefully written, and Trump was given the additional — and highly unusual — consideration of having a letter from Trump’s lawyer also submitted to the magistrate judge who approved the search warrant.
Smith had also argued against a hearing to delve further into the attorney-client privilege claims by Trump, who is seeking to prevent prosecutors from using at trial a series of audio notes made by Evan Corcoran, who worked as Trump’s lawyer on the documents issue.
A federal judge in Washington had previously ruled that Corcoran’s account could be used as evidence in the case because of the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, which allows the use of communications that may have been made in furtherance of a crime. Cannon said Thursday that she, as the judge overseeing the indictment in Florida, had to make her own determination.
She rejected one Trump demand in her order: a request for what lawyers call a Franks hearing, over whether the FBI agent made any false claims when swearing out an affidavit for the search warrant. On that score, Cannon ruled that Trump’s lawyers failed to meet the legal standard for making such a claim.
At the hearings these week, prosecutors lost patience with both the defense arguments and, at one point, the judge herself.
The classified documents trial was initially scheduled to begin last month, but Cannon has charted a slower course, with hearings that explore the particulars not just of how prosecutors and agents investigated the case but of how special counsels are appointed and funded — to the frustration of special counsel Smith and his team.