'Really smart' Jack Smith filing is 'baiting' Aileen Cannon into making a critical mistake

CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams argued on Thursday that special counsel Jack Smith had painted Judge Aileen Cannon into a corner by forcing her to make an appealable ruling about proposed jury instructions before actually empaneling a jury in the Trump Mar-a-Lago documents trial.

Williams' remarks came in reaction to former Trump lawyer Ty Cobb arguing that Cannon had done enough to justify getting removed from the case all together given her rulings that critics have repeatedly called overly deferential to the former president.

"Merely a judge getting it wrong isn't going to be sufficient to get a judge kicked off," he said. "That's why we have appeals courts... Now, the Justice Department did something really, really smart yesterday in saying, 'You have to rule on this motion before the jury's empaneled. If not, we lose our right to appeal, and they we'll move to get you kicked off.'"

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He then explained why this was such a savvy move.

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"Judges have an obligation to rule on anything that could go away once the trial starts," he said. "So they're sort of pushing her and baiting her. And if she fails to do that, I don't see how they at least try to get her kicked off."

Cannon set off a wave of criticism last month when she proposed jury instructions that asked jurors to consider whether top-secret national security documents, including nuclear weapons program secrets, could be deemed Trump's personal property.

An earlier CNN panel on Thursday featured guests speculating she may be having a "personal meltdown" that's resulting in such unorthodox rulings.

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