judge cannon seems to say that a former president might be different in her view than a regular joe. quoting her now, as plaintiff articulated at the hearing, the investigation and treatment of a former president is of unique interest to the general public, and the country is best served by an orderly process that promotes the interest and perception of fairness. unique interest, she writes, before granting what the former attorney general under president trump, no less, recently said this about. well, i think the whole idea of a special master is a bit of a red herring at this stage since they ve already gone through the documents. i think it s a waste of time. agree or disagree with that notion and whatever you might think of how judge cannon arrived at her decision, we ll talk about what it portends with our legal experts in just a moment. first, cnn s sara murray who has all the latest on the ruling itself. walk us through what the judge issued today. reporter: as y
because my initial instinct was, well, but whatever it takes. but the fact is this is cost prohibitive already for so many families, so you don t want to add to that. that s a real concern as well. that s a problem. thank you, allison. don t miss it. cnn s special report, the baby business. it is tonight, 9:00 eastern right here. thank you so much for joining us. ac 360 starts now. the ruling is being called unprecedented and some are calling the basis for it into question. what is not in question, though, what a florida district judge has just decided in the mar-a-lago documents case has immediate implications and perhaps long-term consequences too. john berman here in for anderson. judge eileen cannon s ruling today calls for a special master to look over materials seized from mar-a-lago and temporarily bars the justice department from using it in its investigation of documents in properly kept at the palm beach resort. now, in part of her ruling,
documented is deemed to be executive privilege, i don t think the result of that is you walk it back to mar-a-lago and say, sorry we took it. it s covered by executive privilege. i think what it does mean is that document cannot be used by doj in its prosecution potentially of donald trump. and an important element of today s ruling, john, the judge has said doj, you cannot look at these documents for now. you have to stop your review of these documents. it doesn t mean doj has to stop all of its investigation. but also the judge was careful to say, you can continue to do your damage assessment as necessary. i think the judge tried to do her best to appease as many parties as possible. just a quick follow on that. doj can continue its investigation. they have established the fact of the documents being there, so they may have already gotten what they wanted from him. they ask for witnesses into how they got there, can t they? exactly. i think doj can and should be talking to witnes
that s something that the supreme court reserved just earlier this year in a case against president trump against the january 6th committee. it s an issue the supreme court reserved 40 years ago in a case called nixon v.gsa. i tend to agree with judge gertner. i don t think trump will win that one, but it s going to take months for that issue to get to the supreme court. this gives both sides some kind of space maybe to make this case go away and reach a deal so that we don t keep pressing forward on its own schedule to try to get to an indictment. elie, i ve asked you this about 30 times in the last weeks here. say something is covered by executive privilege. that doesn t mean the documents aren t classified. that doesn t mean the documents don t deal with national offense. why would it mean, then, that they were allowed to be at the president s beach house? right. i don t think it would mean they re allowed to be at the president s beach house. i don t think even if a
shouldn t be able to use them in the first place. so this is a win for donald trump. it s really more of a speed bump than a brick wall for doj, however. judge gertner, what do you think the process will look like? what questions do you have, and what do you think the timing will be? well, the problem here, it would be one thing if she said that the special master was to review attorney-client privilege. those are documents that are easier to figure out on their face, right? letters to and from an attorney, eas even personal items would be easy. executive privilege is an area in which absolutely no court has ever found like circumstances to qualify. one president, the former president telling the incumbent president, don t look at my documents even when president biden says, i need them for my core constitutional function. criminal investigation protecting classified information. so the notion that an