Trump-appointed judge backtracks on her previous ruling after 11th Circuit delivers stinging rebuke

Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon backtracked on previous aspects of her ruling in favor of former President Donald Trump on Thursday, just hours after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a stinging rebuke that overturned her decision to block the government from using top secret documents as part of its investigation.

In a new filing flagged by Politico's Kyle Cheney, Cannon amended her previous order to state that the seized material subject to a special master review no longer includes the "approximately one-hundred documents bearing classification markings."

The 11th Circuit, a three-judge panel that consists of two Trump appointees, criticized arguments made by the former president's lawyers, who wanted the DOJ to be forced to stop its probe into Trump's decision to allegedly keep top secret government documents stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

In their ruling, the judges noted that Trump "has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents. Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents."

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Cannon's original ruling was widely criticized by many legal experts, who said that the United States Department of Justice was likely to win an appeal at the 11th Circuit.