- A federal judge ruled that a special master must review materials seized from Trump's Mar-a-Lago.
- The Monday opinion granted Trump's request and ordered the Justice Department to stop using the documents in its investigation.
A Harvard legal scholar ripped a federal judge's decision that granted former President Donald Trump's request to appoint a special master to review materials seized from Mar-a-Lago.
"Totally lousy opinion. Utterly lawless," Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, wrote on Twitter.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday granted Trump's request that a special master — or independent party — go over materials that FBI agents recovered during their August 8 search of the former president's Mar-a-Lago estate.
In her ruling, Cannon — a Trump-appointed judge in the Southern District of Florida — also granted an injunction that stops the Department of Justice from using the documents in its investigation until the special master completes their review.
In another tweet, Tribe called the opinion "a poorly sewn-together fabric of factual misstatements and legal BS. It looks like her mind was made up the moment Team Trump filed in her court."
Any US government appeal to her ruling would be heard at the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, of which Trump appointed six of the 11 judges, Tribe noted.
Cannon's ruling comes as the Department of Justice continues to investigate if Trump violated any laws by keeping classified government documents at his South Florida Mar-a-Lago resort.
Last week, the DOJ revealed in a court filing that it recovered more than 10,000 government documents at Mar-a-Lago — including over 100 classified records marked "CONFIDENTIAL," "SECRET," or "TOP SECRET."