U.S. Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order Thursday calling for an evidentiary hearing on the justifications for the infamous Mar-a-Lago raid in August 2022 and on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s piercing of attorney-client privilege.
The raid was executed on the basis of a warrant issued in Washington, D.C. by Judge Beryl A. Howell, who is seen as left-wing and anti-Trump. Howell allowed Smith to pierce attorney-client privilege and to force a Trump attorney, Evan Corcoran, to produce notes of Trump’s conversations with him, based on the “crime-fraud exception,” which is invoked if it is suspected that a defendant is using the privilege to commit a crime, in this case concealing documents.
But critics have said that Howell’s decision was problematic — as was the fact that Smith used a judge in D.C., a far more anti-Trump jurisdiction, to pierce attorney-client privilege before filing the “documents” indictment in Florida.
The Washington Post reported:
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.
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Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung praised the decision, calling Cannon a “highly respected” judge and saying the Justice Department has mistreated Trump. “The entire documents case was a political sham from the very beginning, and it should be thrown out entirely,” Cheung said.
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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.
In addition to the piercing of attorney-client privilege, Smith’s case against Trump may also be compromised by accusations that the Department of Justice tried to pressure Stanley Woodward, an attorney for Trump co-defendant Waltine Nauta, by suggesting he could lose a bid for a federal judgeship in the course of representing his client.
Cannon’s order suggests that the trial in the “documents” case could be further delayed, if the case is not dismissed outright. It also means that Trump and his co-defendants will see evidence they might not otherwise have seen.
No date has yet been set for the evidentiary hearing, according to the Post.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
