Judge not buying Trump’s arguments that Mar-a-Lago search warrant was invalid

CNN —

Federal Judge Aileen Cannon said Tuesday she had “a hard time seeing” any problems with the warrant the FBI obtained to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in the summer of 2022.

While she didn’t rule from the bench on the third and final day of oral arguments in Fort Pierce, Florida, Cannon appeared to side with prosecutors over whether Trump’s defense can suppress boxes of evidence seized by the FBI in August 2022.

Trump’s attorney Emil Bove had argued that the warrant was overly broad and unjustly allowed agents to search the entire Mar-a-Lago premises.

Cannon, however, said the language in the warrant, which a magistrate judge signed off on, seems to have been sufficient.

“I have a hard time seeing what more needed to be included” in the warrant’s description of where agents could search in Mar-a-Lago and what physical documents they could seize, Cannon said.

Trump and his co-defendants, personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, are facing charges of mishandling sensitive or classified materials and of obstruction in the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith. All three have pleaded not guilty.

A photo taken by former President Donald Trump's co-defendant and valet Walt Nauta in December 2021, when he was moving boxes into Trump’s residence for review and found that some of the boxes had fallen.

Related article Special counsel defends investigators’ handling of Mar-a-Lago documents kept in ‘haphazard manner’ by Trump

Bove, like in other recent hearings in the classified documents case, wants the judge to hold even more hearings that could probe into the investigators’ work. But Cannon has had tough questions.

“We’re not talking about