U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon denied former President Donald Trump's claim that omissions in a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago would have nullified the "probable cause" standard. However, she also said she would hold yet another hearing on Trump's attempt to prevent special counsel Jack Smith from piercing attorney-client privilege.
In an 11-page order on Thursday, Cannon addressed a motion for a so-called Franks hearing to challenge the Mar-a-Lago warrant. The judge was not impressed with Trump's complaint that the opinions of some FBI officials were omitted in the warrant application.
"[T]he Motion offers an insufficient basis to believe that inclusion in the affidavit of that official's perspective (or of the dissenting views of other FBI agents as referenced generally in his testimony) would have altered the evidentiary calculus in support of probable cause for the alleged offenses," Cannon wrote.
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But Cannon ruled in Trump's favor by agreeing to set a hearing to decide whether specific evidence could be excluded due to attorney-client privilege.
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Cannon noted that Smith expressed concern that the hearing would create a "mini-trial" and further delay the prosecution.
"The Court cannot agree," she said. "The concern about crime-fraud 'mini-trials' has been expressed by courts in the grand jury context... and it makes sense that such a concern reasonably would apply in the post-indictment context, too, at least in a general way."
"But there is a difference between a resource-wasting and delay-producing 'mini-trial,' on the one hand, and an evidentiary hearing geared to adjudicating the contested factual and legal issues on a given pre-trial motion to suppress, on the other."
Legal expert Marcy Wheeler accused Cannon of wasting time.
"Aileen Cannon, in explaining how she's going to waste some more time, says HER frivolous crime-fraud hearings (this will be a second one) are not time-wasters," Wheeler wrote on X.
Cannon declined to immediately schedule the attorney-client privilege hearing and has not set a trial date.
Trump is facing charges for allegedly mishandling classified documents following his presidency.