Judge Aileen Cannon's rulings have baffled and confounded many legal experts over the last year, and at least one retired judge thinks it's time for special counsel Jack Smith to get her booted from the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
In an interview with Politico, retired federal judge Nancy Gertner made the case that Cannon has already done more than enough to disqualify herself from overseeing such an important case.
“It’s clear that she is going in a ridiculous direction,” she said, referring in part to jury instructions floated by Cannon that would ask jurors to consider whether top-secret government documents at former President Donald Trump's personal property. “The government could be without recourse after a trial begins... I don’t even know why they indulged her... I think they need to stop playing games and move to disqualify her.”
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David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor from South Florida, argued that Cannon's cumulative actions have had the effect of seriously delaying the trial, which is playing into Trump's strategy of pushing off all his trials until after the 2024 presidential election.
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"I am not a conspiracy theorist and I don’t want to say this is being done to intentionally delay the way that the case is moving along, but the longer this drags out it seems that way," he said.
All of this, notes Politico, has led to Smith and his team expressing clear frustration with Cannon's decision making, as this week they held out the threat of appeal should Cannon refused to rule out her proposed jury instructions.
Former federal prosecutor Ken White told CNN that Smith's latest filing "is more aggressive than prosecutors typically are with federal judges (likely because federal judges usually rule in their favor) and reflects a level of frustration with Judge Cannon’s very odd approach to this issue."
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