'Knock it off': Ex-federal prosecutor likens Judge Cannon to 'a real housewife' over latest move
Former federal prosecutor Kristy Greenberg on Sunday explained how Judge Aileen Cannon has created "a mess" of Special Counsel Jack Smith's January 6 case against Donald Trump.
Speaking with Greenberg on the latest episode of MSNBC's The Weekend, co-host Michael Steele noted that news of Smith resigning from his post on Friday "wasn't blasted out in a press release, but included in a court filing submitted by department officials to Judge Aileen Cannon, urging Cannon not to extend her restrictions that's temporarily blocking the release of Smith's final report on his investigations into Donald Trump."
Greenberg replied, "This is such a mess. You've got two volumes of this special counsel report — the January 6th volume, and the classified documents volume. With respect to the classified documents volume, Merrick Garland kind of took himself out of it. He said, we're not going to publicly release it. And the reason is because, well, there is still this ongoing appeal of Judge Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents case against these two co-defendants. And so there could be some prejudice to them, so we're just not going to publicly release it, we want to just release it to a few members of Congress. I mean, that's absurd."
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The legal analyst continued, "In a week from now, Trump's justice department is going to dismiss that appeal. And so why don't we just drop that appeal now and go ahead and release the classified documents report to the public? That's something that the public, I think, is entitled to see from the incoming president, who's going to be charged with once again protecting the nation's secrets."
"So, that piece was confounding to me," Greenberg emphasized, "that the DOJ made that decision. As to the January 6th report, Judge Cannon has no jurisdiction over this case, right? It's on appeal to the 11th Circuit with respect to those two co-defendants. She's got no skin in the game. And yet, these co-defendants know if they want something done for Donald Trump, you go to Judge Cannon. So that's what they did. She halted the report despite the fact that January 6th was not her case, halts the report for three days after the appellate court can look at it. Appellate court looks at it on Thursday and says, 'Yeah, you can go ahead and release this, no problem.' But they didn't kind of do the belt and suspenders of also vacating her order."
The former prosecutor added, "The co-defendants go back to Judge Cannon, and they say, 'Hey, why don't we have a hearing,' which we know she loves to do, and she knows she's got eight days until Donald Trump takes over and these reports would never see the light of day. So what is she doing? She's doing what she needs to do. She's like a real housewife who got the assignment. She's trying to create a storyline for herself for this week, to be able to create drama, to be able to make sure to punt this until he can come in and try and bury it."
"Hopefully, the 11th Circuit stops it," Greenberg concludes. "They've already said these reports should be released. Nothing about what's in the January 6th report has anything to do with Judge Cannon. And just yesterday, she ordered DOJ to say, 'Tell me more about why the January 6th report has nothing to do with these defendants.' About half an hour ago, DOJ said, 'has nothing to do with these defendants, and you don't have jurisdiction.' So, hopefully the 11th Circuit comes in and tells her to knock it off."
READ MORE: 'Suppression of the truth': Legal experts blast Judge Cannon for blocking Jack Smith report
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