Trump judge already made « egregiously flawed ruling » and appears to be « in over her head, » Bradley Moss says.
With no trial date in sight for Donald Trump’s classified documents case, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is holding another round of pre-trial hearings to hear out the former president’s complaints about special counsel Jack Smith’s authority and proposed gag order.
The latest pre-trial hearings will continue Tuesday and come as the trial remains stuck in limbo after Cannon – a Trump appointee – indefinitely pushed the trial date back in May. Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 40 criminal charges stemming from the discovery of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office.
D.C.-based national security attorney Bradley Moss pointed out that the late June hearings come months after Trump began filings such complaints.
“The key isn’t that she ultimately rejects the motion, it is the months she wasted sitting on the issue that matters,” Moss said.
Moss pointed to a recent article by The New York Times, which found that two more experienced judges urged Cannon to hand off Trump’s classified document cases to another jurist.
“She is inexperienced, had already made an egregiously flawed ruling in the pre-indictment phase that resulted in an appellate court thrashing, and appeared in over her head,” Moss said. “It would have been easy to reassign it to another judge but she refused, and the result has been the administrative mess in which that case now finds itself.”
In court Friday and Monday, Trump’s lawyers argued that Attorney General Merrick Garland lacks power under the Constitution to appoint a special counsel – and that the Senate should have confirmed Smith instead.
“The text of these statutes really matters,” Trump lawyer Emil Bove said Friday, according to The New York Times.
According to federal statute, “grounds for appointing a special counsel” include when:
“(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and
(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.”
Trump’s lawyers are pointing to another federal statute that says:
“The Attorney General or any other officer of the Department of Justice, or any attorney specially appointed by the Attorney General under law, may, when specifically directed by the Attorney General, conduct any kind of legal proceeding, civil or criminal, including grand jury proceedings and proceedings before committing magistrate judges, which United States attorneys are authorized by law to conduct…”
Trump’s lawyers argue that means only Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys can be appointed as special counsel.
But in filings entered on Sunday, the special counsel pointed out that when Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr served under former President George H.
