The judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents case is making decisions that are drawing scathing rebukes. And they may earn her a recusal.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump before he left office, this week ordered defense lawyers and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's team to file their own version of submissions breaking down instructions they would offer to instruct a jury around competing interpretations of the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
Trump’s defense in the case has cited the PRA granting the 45th president the right to keep classified documents, which he took from the White House to be tucked away at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
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Appearing on CNN, Trump's former attorney Ty Cobb was utterly mystified by the move to the point that he is convinced that Cannon is likely going to be bucked from the bench.
"This is a remarkable misunderstanding of the applicable law it's embarrassing," he told Erin Burnett. "She's been struggling so dramatically in this case ever since the start when she was she butchered the Special Master decision and the 11th Circuit took her to task for it."
"This is a total totally baffling position."
The 11th Circuit, a body above Cannon's jurisdiction, overruled Cannon and stated that she “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction” regarding the Special Master exploration.
The court determined no matter the provenance of the document in question it is the government that maintains the authority to seize it under a warrant supported by probable cause.
The Special Master reversal was just one of the moves she's made that Cobb believes shows brazen bias toward Trump.
"... She appears to believe that the Presidential Records Act is actually consequential in the case which it is not," he said. "This is an Espionage Act case; this is not a presidential records violation."
Cobb then tries his hand at correcting Cannon, censuring her for even considering the alternative theories.
"That this case is the theory that Trump has the ability to designate classified material as personal records is absurd on his fix," he said. "There is no legal support for that, but she has put Jack Smith in a position of trying to draft jury instructions and advance that would posit that question to the jury."
He then knocked the judge for this time waste.
"I think that it is such a fundamental error and it is it is so to reflective of bias that it does provide a basis you know, not a dispositive basis, but it does provide a basis for seeking her recusal."
