The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump won a small procedural break on Sept. 29, 2022, in the Mar-a-Lago records case. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pushed Special Master Raymond Dearie’s deadline from Nov. 30 to Dec. 16, giving the review more time, and she declined to require Trump’s lawyers to file an immediate separate sworn statement about the FBI’s inventory of seized materials.

Cannon’s ruling did not decide who is right about the seized records. It narrowed one of Dearie’s early demands: that Trump’s side respond right away to the government’s inventory and state whether it believed the list was accurate. Cannon said that step was not required at that stage, though disputes over the inventory could still be raised later with the special master.

The order left Dearie with a slower schedule and less leverage than he had tried to use in setting up the review. It also reflected the practical problem Cannon cited: the work of reviewing roughly 11,000 documents had run into delays tied to finding a vendor to scan the material.

The special-master process itself remained focused on privilege claims and other disputes over records seized from Mar-a-Lago. The Justice Department was still using the documents with classification markings in its investigation, while the special master continued working through the rest of the material. Cannon’s Sept. 29 order changed the timetable and one procedural requirement. It did not resolve the case’s bigger fight over the documents or the investigation that surrounds them.