A special master for documents taken from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago could complicate

Cannon, 41, whom Trump appointed to the bench in the Southern District of Florida in 2020, has also given federal officials until Tuesday to provide the court with a more detailed list of items the FBI had removed from Trump’s Florida estate on Aug. 8.

She asked the government to give a status report of its own review of the materials and set a Thursday court hearing in West Palm Beach, Fla. That location is about an hour away from the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she typically hears cases.

Yet her ruling left unclear how a special master would operate and who might qualify to take on such a role in a case involving classified national security secrets.

“It’s going to have to be somebody with expertise and experience in classified and national defense information. Those people don’t grow on trees,” said Stanley M. Brand, a defense attorney who focuses on representing clients involved in government investigations. “They are either former-somethings in the government or lawyers with a lot of experience in those issues. But that will be a contested issue as well. Once again, we’re on the frontier.”

Legal experts said the very provisions Cannon asked of the Justice Department ahead of the hearing could render the need for a special master moot by the time the parties appear before the judge. For instance, federal prosecutors could indicate that the government review is nearly complete. And it may provide such a specified accounting of the documents taken that the judge herself could assess whether they belong to the government.

“There’s already been a team reviewing this for almost three weeks now. You don’t collect this stuff to let it sit there and not get started. There’s public pressure on them,” said Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security during the Obama administration.

The government could report that it is far along in its review, she added, rendering an evaluation by a special master too late.

“Then, you can’t put the milk back in the bottle,” McCord said. “Pointedly, she did not tell them to stop, so they can keep reviewing until she makes a ruling.”

The official inventory said authorities removed more than two dozen boxes of materials during the search, including 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were marked top secret.

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Cannon’s hearing is taking place independently of the proceedings over the authorization of the search warrant, which was signed by U.S. District Judge Bruce E. Reinhart.

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