Judge Aileen Cannon lets Trump off the hook on identifying ‘planted’ Mar-a-Lago documents

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has thrown another legal lifeline to former President Donald Trump.

The Trump appointee in the Mar-a-Lago documents case overruled her own special master’s order that would have forced Trump to identify any documents he claims were planted by FBI agents.

Cannon also gave Trump’s team three more weeks to pore over the documents, another break for the ex-president as he seeks to slow down the investigation.

“There shall be no separate requirement on (Trump to make) final objections to the accuracy of the Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents,” Cannon wrote in an order late Thursday.

The judge also agreed with Trump’s lawyers that they could take until mid-December to complete the process of delving through the 10,000 or so documents seized in the Aug. 8 search.

Both rulings amount to unusual efforts to micromanage federal Judge Raymond Dearie, a senior jurist who was taking a much harsher line with the former president than Cannon.

The Justice Department could appeal Cannon’s rulings.

Cannon initially ordered Dearie to oversee all the documents, including 100 top secret classified documents, and blocked prosecutors from using them to continue their probe. Trump says some of the documents might be covered by attorney-client or executive privilege.

But an appeals court brusquely slapped down that part of her order, effectively giving the Department of Justice the green light to resume the investigation into violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction.

The twice-impeached president has made numerous outlandish claims about the documents, including that agents might be seeking to frame him and that he declassified the documents “by thinking about it.”

Trump’s legal team has argued that making those assertions under oath or withdrawing the claims could limit their legal options if he is indicted and faces criminal charges.

Dearie took a dim view of those claims, telling one of Trump’s lawyers: “you can’t have your cake and eat it.”