Following a federal judge’s decision Monday to appoint a “special master” to review materials seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, executive privilege is expected to become an issue as the Justice Department likely will appeal the decision. Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, rejected the DOJ’s “narrow view” of executive privilege, CNN’s John King noted on Inside Politics, adding that “the Justice Department’s view is that Donald Trump is not now President, he has no executive privilege.” He said the judge was not saying “absolutely,” but instead was leaving the role of executive privilege as an “open question.” In her opinion for the special master, the judge’s decision noted: “As Plaintiff stated at the hearing, the investigation and treatment of a former president is of unique interest to the general public and the country is best served by an orderly process that promotes interest and the perception of justice”. The judge’s overall decision is “legally unjustifiable,” Jennifer Rogers, a former federal prosecutor, told King. “There’s just never been a case where a criminal investigation has been shown to cause irreparable harm. That’s one of the main things that the Department of Justice, the executive branch, does is to investigate criminal people. So the idea that this can create irreparable The damage to me still says this is a legally wrong decision,” he said of the special master. Former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rogers talks to CNN’s John King on Monday. Rogers added, “On the other hand, this idea that this is so great and that he’s giving it because he’s the former president, I think it’s kind of good news for the Justice Department because one of the problems with it is that it sets a precedent for other defendants on the street who say, “Hey, wait, you searched my stuff, I want a special gentleman, even though it’s not my attorney’s office and there’s no reason to believe that many privileges apply,” I think that part is good”. Rodgers explained that there is a silver lining, “in the sense that I don’t think there will ultimately be a lot of attorney/client privilege … very few attorney/client privilege documents and even executive privilege On the one hand, executive privilege would be only if documents were created in the executive branch, really, in the White House, and so many of those documents are going to be created in other places.” “So while it delays things and slows things down, which is bad for the DOJ and his case, I think at the end of the day, we’re not going to see a lot of special documents that the master is going to pull.” she added. CNN’s Evan Perez noted, “This issue of executive privilege is kind of weird, right? Because it’s never been fought over like this. So we don’t know where the courts are going to end up with this. John, and certainly, we don’t know if this it will have to go to the Supreme Court before we can even move forward.”
