In a scathing filing, the special counsel pushed back on Judge Aileen Cannon’s interpretations of laws that could define the case against Trump
Special Counsel Jack Smith went toe-to-toe with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon over her requests for jury instructions in Donald Trump’s classified documents case.
In a scathing filing submitted Tuesday, Smith accused Cannon of operating on an “unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise” when she requested that the parties in the case draft different versions of their proposed jury instructions based on their competing interpretations of laws governing classified materials and presidential records.
Trump has argued that his retention of classified documents after his ouster from the White House was perfectly legal. Claiming that he both unilaterally telepathically declassified the documents, and that they were simply personal records he was already authorized to take. The former president’s trial on 40 charges related to his alleged mishandling of the documents is scheduled to begin in May, but will likely be delayed.
Cannon is doing everything she can to just give Dummy Tbags a win.
Blatant corruption.
I guarantee that it’ll come back to bite her. The judiciary does not take kindly to rogue judges.
Ahh yes. Just like all those penalties for Matthew Kacsmaryk that will arrive aaaaany day now.
Federal judges serve for life. There’s not a whole lot anybody can do about this.
What are you basing this on?
Courts self manage their own judges. Usually an appeals court or a state supreme court will punish judges for misconduct. At the Federal level, I’m not sure if it starts at an appeals court or the SCOTUS, but they can definitely punish and remove federal judges as well. Impeachment is also an option, but that’s a hard one to do.
I hear you, and those things seem nice at a glance, but I don’t agree with your sense of guarantee. We’re seeing an upending of things that “usually” happen, or that “definitely can” happen, especially with “self-managed” entities such as the SCOTUS. Have you seen judges actually get held accountable recently, even locally?
Obstruction of justice*
She’s going to eventually get herself removed from the bench and possibly disbarred for this abusive behavior.
Then she will get a raise and be on fox news for a decade
She ain’t gonna do shit and Trump will never face any real consequences ever except from historians 30 years after the next Great War. After the last literal 11th hour reduced bailout it suddenly became all clarity and nihilistic wisdom to me. Trump has already destroyed America. It’s already too late.
Trump didn’t destroy the country. He just stepped into the gaping wound that the narcissists that populate this land left open.
More like he stuck his greedy little hands in there and pulled out the entrails.
She’ll just get a commentator gig on NewsMax, which will likely pay a lot more. Or, she could go to Fox, but would probably have to bleach her hair first.
Sure, but she won’t be an attorney or judge, which is the good thing. NewsMax is a bubble that we can ignore.
Yeah. We all are. Her having any part of that case has been a total farce.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Special Counsel Jack Smith went toe-to-toe with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon over her requests for jury instructions in Donald Trump’s classified documents case.
In a scathing filing submitted Tuesday, Smith accused Cannon of operating on an “unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise” when she requested that the parties in the case draft different versions of their proposed jury instructions based on their competing interpretations of laws governing classified materials and presidential records.
“If the Court concludes […] that a President has carte blanche to remove any document from the White House at the end of his presidency; that any document so removed must be treated as a personal record under the PRA as an unreviewable matter of law; and that, also as a matter of law, a former President is forever authorized to possess such a document regardless of how highly classified it may be and how it is stored, that would constitute a “clearly erroneous jury instruction that entails a high probability of failure of a prosecution,” the special counsel added, noting that they would appeal if such a decision were made.
Smith also argued that the proposed scenarios align not with established legal interpretations but with Trump’s post hoc justifications for keeping the documents.
There is no basis in law or fact for that legal presumption, and the Court should reject Trump’s effort to invent one as a vehicle to inject the PRA into this case,” Smith wrote.
Cannon, who was appointed by Trump to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in 2020, has been criticized for her apparent indecision and slow-walking of major decisions in the case — allowing Trump’s defense team to languish as the former president seeks to delay his criminal trials through the November election.
The original article contains 594 words, the summary contains 296 words. Saved 50%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Wake me up when actual consequences follow… So far it has just been a horrible tease
she requested that the parties in the case draft different versions of their proposed jury instructions based on their competing interpretations of laws governing classified materials and presidential records.
Can someone inform me how jury instructions are normally created?
This “defendant and prosecutor write your jury instructions” seems like a blatant attempt to get the more favorable one to Trump (the lawyers will always try the most extreme reading) and then try to wipe her hands clean.
So…everyone in the world saw this coming. Everyone except Jack.
Trump just needs to delay another 6 months and he won.
Jack most likely saw it coming, he has just been following court protocols which requires the judge to do the dumb thing first and he needs to respond to it.
Yeah, look at the man’s resume. He’s prosecuted politicians, spies, and big names. He worked at the Hague for a while and prosecuted actual war criminals from the war in Kosovo.
He’s had plenty of experience figuring out ways around blatant government corruption. I bet he never dreamed he’d have to use those tactics in Florida, though.
He’s following the rules and being perfectly thorough. He is dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” and he is doing it because if he does any less he leaves unnecessary doors open for Trump to appeal the case if he looses. I just hope that Jack Smith’s competence is enough to counter Cannon’s malfeasance.
And this is also why it takes him time to respond whereas Trump’s lawyers are just spraying spaghetti at the court in hopes that some of it sticks to a wall somewhere.
He going appeal no matter what Jack does. Trump will delay, delay, delay.
Be that as it may, it would be foolish to try and rush things and risk giving the defense a valid reason to appeal. Slow and steady wins this race.
Only if he is elected, which hopefully never happens again.
I don’t want to gamble on how dumb Americans are. I somehow constantly underestimate it.
I’ve been chanting that mantra since W’s second election. His performance in his first term and in the debates were so abysmal that I thought it was over. Nope, turned out that people would rather have a beer with W than with John Kerry and that somehow was the important thing.
For anyone who is unaware, this really did happen.
The polls say otherwise, and I’m not convinced the D’s aren’t just throwing it at this point. Not having to do shit and saying “Trump Bad” is lucrative.
It’s pretty much guaranteed at this point because Biden and the Democratic party decided assisting Israel in genocide was more important than beating Trump.
