The ongoing delay in former President Donald Trump's classified documents case has outraged critics who say Judge Aileen Cannon is tipping the scales in favor of the man who appointed her, but one legal expert Tuesday made a case for a surprising benefactor: special counsel Jack Smith.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance pointed to reports of Trump's 2020 Mar-a-Lago trip, "kept quiet" by aides, that has raised suspicions among Smith's team of prosecutors conducting a probe.
"Delay helps Trump in a very real sense but also hurts," Vance wrote. "Over time, the government's evidence keeps getting better."
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The trip in question took place in July 2022, just weeks before FBI agents searched Trump's social club for the classified documents at the heart of Smith's Espionage Violations case, ABC News was first to report Monday.
"Several witnesses who spoke to investigators described the trip as highly unusual, given that Trump typically spends the summer months at his Bedminster club in New Jersey," sources reportedly told ABC News. "And because Trump's living quarters at his Mar-a-Lago property were under construction at the time of the visit."
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Americans Tuesday were given a novel look inside what Trump might have found when Smith shared shocking photos of cluttered boxes in haphazard heaps taken from inside the Florida social club.
"Trump personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes," Smith wrote in his rebuttal to the former president's dismissal motion.
"They landed in stacks in the storage room, several boxes fell and splayed their contents on the floor."
Keen-eyed observers also noted the documents stored alongside cases of Diet Coke, rumpled clothes and portrait that portrays Trump with eagle-wing horns.
Vance's take on the new information was met with skepticism from followers who raised concerns about Cannon's priorities and courtroom practices.
"Judge Aileen Manchurian Candidate is doing her best though--to stop the wheels of justice from every turning," replied Art Martin.
"It isn't going to matter in Cannon's Court," added X user Brad Moore. "She's either going to delay this case until March of 2025, or just dismiss the entire case."