'Sheer delay': Former US atty slams Judge Cannon’s 'ridiculous' ruling in Trump’s favor

27 June 2024

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon appears to have aided former President Donald Trump's efforts yet again to delay his classified documents trial until after the election after her latest ruling.

Lawfare legal reporter Anna Bower tweeted Thursday that Judge Cannon — whom Trump appointed to a judgeship in the Southern District of Florida during his final months in office — granted the ex-president another procedural delay. Even though Cannon denied Trump's legal team a request for a hearing to determine if the FBI lied in its initial Mar-a-Lago search warrant (also known as a "Franks hearing"), she allowed for another hearing concerning attorney-client privilege.

In a tweet of her own, Joyce Vance – who was a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama during former President Barack Obama's administration — blasted Cannon's decision to grant Trump's request for the hearing, which she viewed as another means of stalling a trial date.

"The standard for getting a Franks hearing (whether an agent/affiant lied in a search warrant) is very high-Trump wasn't close," Vance wrote. "But the decision to hold an evidentiary hearing after a hearing on legal arguments? Hard to see that as anything other than sheer delay. Ridiculous."

Thursday's decision marks yet another obstacle for Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith in his prosecution of the former president, which still does not have a trial date on the calendar. Smith recently had to trudge through a week of hearings challenging his authority to prosecute the ex-president after Cannon allowed outside groups to unsuccessfully argue he should be removed from the case.

These hearings come after Cannon scuttled her initially scheduled trial date of May 20, citing a backlog of pre-trial motions she has yet to rule on. Retired U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner — who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton to the District of Massachusetts — recently told the Hill that she believes Cannon is intentionally grinding the case to a halt for the benefit of the ex-president who gave her a lifetime position in the federal judiciary.

“There’s nothing — nothing — about the way she has handled the case that is normal, that is usual, and that makes a degree of sense — except that she’s just so inexperienced or second, that she’s just not confident, or third, that she is so biased to Trump,” Gernter said. "By not setting a trial date, by not deciding motions, she is simply slow-walking the case, and that is clearly in Trump’s interest."

The classified documents case is viewed as the strongest of the two federal cases against Trump, given all of the evidence seized in the Mar-a-Lago search. In July of 2023, he was indicted on 37 felony counts including willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal and making false statements.

“Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced,” Smith said after the indictment was unsealed. “Violations of those laws put our country at risk.”

Some of the more serious charges in Smith's indictment carry a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison. A trial before Election Day is unlikely, however, given Cannon's slow handling of the case.

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