NEW: Months ago, Judge Aileen Cannon ordered the unsealing of materials attached to Trump's motion for more discovery materials in the Mar a Lago docs case. Among the information to be unsealed were the names of nearly 24 witnesses--so the government asked her to reconsider. 1/
She has now ruled on that motion for reconsideration, and while chastising the Special Counsel for its failure to abide by local procedural rules and raise certain arguments and facts earlier, she concedes those witness names shouldn't become public record after all. 2/
gov.uscourts.flsd.648652.438.0.pdf ()courtlistener.com
But the decision's not entirely a win. The Special Counsel's office also asked that she not unseal the prior statements of potential government witnesses, which were provided to the defense months even though under the pertinent statute, the feds were not obligated to do so. 3/
Cannon says redactions to those statements are OK to ensure witnesses' identities are not compromised; the parties should not only redact dates of birth, Social Security numbers, email addresses, and phone numbers, but should also protect "professional titles; detailed biographical or professional background information . . . and other specific information which would obviously and directly identify a potential witness."
But the substantive content of those statements? Those will be fully public--and my guess is that their publication will fuel needless speculation about who said what, notwithstanding her allowance for some redactions. 5/
Some former prosecutors in my orbit had predicted that if Cannon denied the motion for reconsideration, thereby forcing the revelation of witness names, the Special Counsel would take an immediate appeal to the 11th Circuit & might ask for Cannon's removal too. 6/
But that's not what happened tonight--and it's unclear to me what Smith does next, especially considering that their biggest concern -- the safety of witnesses and the integrity of their testimony -- appears to have been addressed. Watch this space. FIN.
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