When we last left U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the former President Donald Trump appointee to the federal bench had bestowed upon the man to whom she owed her judgeship a most welcome gift. To recap: A federal magistrate reviewing a detailed FBI affidavit had found probable cause to conclude that Trump had violated the Espionage Act and committed obstruction of justice. He had thereupon authorized an FBI search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.

That search did not exactly come up empty: The FBI found some 100 classified documents that The Former Guy had unlawfully taken, unlawfully retained, unlawfully concealed and, evidently, unlawfully lied about. This was over and above the approximately 200 similarly classified documents the government had previously learned Trump took with him when he left office.

This did not put Trump in an advantageous position, legally speaking.

Cannon, however, proved ready to do her part. Trump's lawyers scored a perfect 10 in the judge-shopping competition, filing a lawsuit in Cannon's court, asking that she block the Justice Department's criminal investigation by prohibiting it from using the classified documents — that is, the evidence of criminality — until a "special master" had first reviewed the 11,000 documents taken from Trump's residence.

The purpose? To have the special master spend weeks, perhaps months, assessing whether the classified documents were indeed classified, and to determine whether any document could be withheld from the investigators on the ground that it was subject to "executive privilege."

Cannon was quick to oblige — very quick. Without even waiting for the Justice Department's response to the request, she announced that she was inclined to grant it, and grant it she did.

This was a head-scratcher.

For one thing, the classified documents were marked "classified," and, unless the Classification Fairy had put the markings there, they were, well, classified. Trump's lawyers had literally no contrary evidence, and the former president's claim that he had declassified them by waving a magic wand between bites of a double cheeseburger ("Mirror, mirror, on the wall: who's the biggest declassifier of them all?") was not the sort of thing customarily credited by federal judges.

As for any claim of "executive privilege," Trump's team likewise declined to offer any factual or legal basis that would shield a single piece of paper taken from Trump's home. They may as well have demanded that a special master evaluate whether Trump was entitled to the Bugs Bunny Privilege.

No matter. A special master was appointed, and the investigation was put on ice.

Not for long. The special master, a highly respected federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, put the Trump lawyers on notice that he wasn't tolerating any song-and-dance. He asked whether Trump had any evidence that the classified documents were somehow not classified.

We'll get back to you, they replied.

They were spared the trouble. Because before you could say "What was she thinking?" a three-judge federal appellate panel including two Trump appointees ruled that Cannon's decision was so fundamentally contrary to the law as to constitute an abuse of her discretion. It reversed her order blocking the Justice Department from using the retrieved classified documents as it saw fit.

But the matter isn't over. The special master is under orders from Cannon to determine whether Trump is entitled to invoke the Bugs Bunny, er, executive privilege as to any of the remaining 11,000 documents. The special master will likely rule that Trump is not and recommend that Cannon rule the same way. Lord knows what she will do, and what delays, the Holy Grail of potential criminal defendants, will ensue.

The Justice Department has asked the appellate court to reverse the rest of Cannon's order, whose effect and likely purpose is to make federal prosecutors slog through quicksand. It hopes that if the appellate court tells Cannon a second time that she was wrong, she will be too embarrassed to continue running interference for Trump.

One can only hope.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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