The Lawfare Podcast: Judge Cannon’s Latest Mar-a-Lago Ruling

Jen Patja, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes, Scott R. Anderson, Alan Z. Rozenshtein
Monday, September 19, 2022, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
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On September 15, Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued two key rulings in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. She appointed Judge Raymond Dearie of the Eastern District of New York as the special master reviewing the documents and denied the Justice Department’s motion for a partial stay of her previous injunction barring the department from using the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in its criminal investigation. The next day, Friday, September 16, the Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for a partial stay of the September 15 ruling.

Lawfare senior editor Quinta Jurecic sat down for a live conversation on Twitter Spaces with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes and senior editors Scott Anderson and Alan Rozenshtein to talk through Cannon’s latest ruling. They recorded before the Justice Department filed its appeal, but the conversation is a useful breakdown of Cannon’s somewhat off-the-wall orders. Namely: what, exactly, is this judge doing? And where is the case headed next?


Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.
Quinta Jurecic is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a senior editor at Lawfare. She previously served as Lawfare's managing editor and as an editorial writer for the Washington Post.
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
Scott R. Anderson is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow in the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. He previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State and as the legal advisor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Alan Z. Rozenshtein is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, a senior editor at Lawfare, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as an Attorney Advisor with the Office of Law and Policy in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland.

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