Judge Cannon STUNS Jack Smith With Devastating Ultimatum
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has handed another win to former President Donald Trump in his classified documents case, telling special counsel Jack Smith to effectively hand over all classified materials to a jury for scrutiny or risk a Trump acquittal by refusing to do so.
The Daily Beast reports that Judge Cannon’s decision, handed down Monday night, backs Smith into a corner in terms of presenting evidence that Trump may have unlawfully taken documents from the White House containing national security secrets and other highly sensitive information. Either a jury of private citizens gets the chance to review the documents, or Smith runs the risk that the jury would acquit Trump based on a lack of evidence that anything in his possession was actually classified.
In her ruling, Judge Cannon wrote that Smith must consider several scenarios when presenting his case: either “a jury is permitted to examine” all documents that President Trump retained and claimed were “personal” mementos, or the jury must be instructed that “a president has sole authority… to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency.”
Cannon added that the 1978 Presidential Records Act is too vague and broad to encompass what a president may or may not declassify.
“Although there is no formal means in the PRA by which a president is to make that categorization, an outgoing president’s decision to exclude what he/she considers to be personal records from presidential records transmitted to the National Archives and Records Administration constitutes a president’s categorization of those records as personal under the PRA,” she wrote.
Should he appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Smith would still find himself beset by yet another delay in a trial that observers already believe will stretch beyond the 2024 election, a situation that prosecutors have long sought to avoid. The Justice Department is prosecuting President Trump in a Washington, D.C. case related to the January 6th, 2021 riots at the Capitol while local prosecutors in New York and Georgia have brought their own criminal cases against the former president. Smith’s calendar must now accommodate not only all other cases, but also the timeline for a potential appeal of Judge Cannon’s latest decision. He must also account for several setbacks related to discovery timelines and opportunities for Trump’s legal team to cross-examine all 84 witnesses prosecutors say they intend to call.
President Trump has long maintained that any documents in his possession were declassified under the Presidential Records Act, though former members of his Mar-a-Lago staff have since reached plea agreements that have seen them testify against the Republican leader. Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, declined to dismiss the case altogether last week.
