On Recent Special Master Timelines & Candidates

Ken Deuel

Ken was in the US Navy for 20 years, and has been on the internet for 25 years. Recently discovered that he is a cat person. Formerly a political libertarian weirdo, but not completely formerly.

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15 Responses

  1. Kolohe says:

    Hey Jaybird, you said to write more. This is that! 😉Report

  2. Michael Cain says:

    The big unknown in this case is what the rules regarding all the classified documents will be. Will the special master have to read the documents? Will the master require all of the clearances normally necessary to do that? What about the master’s staff? Will the master be subject to the normal rules that taking notes about the documents is not allowed? What will the working conditions be for, say, Top Secret/SCI documents?

    As I understand the judge’s ruling, the FBI/DOJ cannot use any of the seized documents, classified or not, for investigative purposes. I don’t believe she said anything about not bringing the documents back under the normal security routines. I recall reading an opinion somewhere that unless the SCOTUS chooses to overrule parts of the Presidential Records Act and the classified records procedures, there’s not a chance that any of the classified documents will ever be returned to Trump.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to Michael Cain says:

      The ruling did say under “Temporary Injunctive relief) that that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) could continue what they were doing:

      As a final matter, the Court determines that a temporary injunction on the Government’s use of the seized materials for investigative purposes—but not ODNI’s national security assessment—

      earlier in the ruling that assessment was defined as:

      ODNI is leading an intelligence community assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from disclosure of the seized materials

      My own limited experience with this sort of thing tells me they *are* going to continue to assess internally ‘ok what’s the bad things that may occur if such and such knows about this or that super secret squirrel stuff’. And that’s what Judge Cannon has specifically signed off on.

      But they are *not*, I’m pretty sure, doing any kind of classification review – no assessment as to whether 1) docs marked classified have material that should still be classified 2) docs not marked classified actually contain classified material 3) stuff with classification markings are at the right level and compartment for what the document says. But that’s not because the Judge says they can’t, it’s because that sort of process is a completely different one than the one initiated by this sort of thing.Report

  3. Jaybird says:

    What’s the size of the poll of potentials?

    1. There are two people who qualify and the other one had his thyroid removed a week ago
    2. There are literally 4 dozen people who qualify and this person keeps getting pickedReport

    • Kolohe in reply to Jaybird says:

      I tried to use Courtlistener dot com and Courthousenews dot com to get a better handle of the larger ecosystem of ‘special masters. There do seem to be several active at any given time in the federal court system, but without a ‘real’ law search engine account (like PACER?) it’s hard for me as layman to get a good idea of usual practices.Report

      • Michael Cain in reply to Kolohe says:

        There are always at least a couple because there are always at least a couple of interstate water compact cases before the Supreme Court, and the first thing the Court does with one of those is to assign a special master. (Then ignore the case for some years.) Often multiple special masters per case, sequentially. I believe that Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado is on its third or fourth special master.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    The big thing about Judge Cannon deciding to grant the request for the special master is that it seems she went outside of the pleadings and created a better argument for Trump than his own lawyers. She is also a last-minute Trump appointee and only 39, so another of Leonard Leo’s “gifts” who will be around for 3 or 4 decades.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I made a snarky comment on twitter on how my own state, Virginia’s, two senators – each of whom are Democrats, and one, a former Vice Presidential candidate – both voted for her confirmation. The weird thing about the roll call to me was how many “not-voting” Senators there were – 23, and a roughly equal number of Dems & Gops.

      Everything about this judge’s elevation to her current position has been half-assed.Report

  5. Lord Avebury says:

    As always, if you want the deepest analysis of these Trumpian legal shenanigans, you should follow Emptywheel:
    https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/09/05/aileen-cannon-calls-an-investigation-into-whats-literally-a-stolen-diary-politicized/Report

  6. Philip H says:

    Recent back and forth on who to appoint and what they should do still centers around Trump’s unfounded assertions under a Unitary Executive theory that if he said something was declassified it was, and NARA can’t keep it form him anyway.

    I’m sure that’s not what Bill Barr has advocated for all these years of course.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Philip H says:

      I want to see a sworn declaration by Obama that he secretly re-classified them, and one from Jimmy Carter that he put all of the documents on double secret probation.Report

    • Philip H in reply to Philip H says:

      Oh it gets better:

      The Trump lawyers argue the court didn’t ask for detailed reasoning, and they are trying to be “more respectful to the candidates from either party.”

      “Plaintiff also submits it is more respectful to the candidates from either party to withhold the bases for opposition from a public, and likely to be widely circulated, pleading,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Therefore, Plaintiff asks this Court for permission to specifically express our objections to the Government’s nominees only at such time that the Court specifies a desire to obtain and consider that information.”

      https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/12/politics/special-master-nominee-responses/index.htmlReport