On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon denied Donald Trump’s request to see more classified evidence federal prosecutors submitted in his Florida criminal trial.
The trial is over his alleged willful retention of national security materials and his frustration of government efforts to get them back. The level of access Cannon is denying Trump is not usually available in such cases, according to her.
As far as she is concerned, withholding the records would not weaken Trump’s defense. Cannon rejected the request to see the filings under Section 4 of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). It protects national security secrets of issue in criminal proceedings.
Cannon implied that special counsel Jack Smith may have overstated the CIPA law in his argument against sharing the materials with the defense. In her opinion, she believes that Trump’s charges do not include transmission of the sensitive information.
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Her interpretation of the law is that judges have the authority to make that decision themselves. “As best the Court can discern following its rigorous analysis, Defendants’ rights will not be impaired by today’s ruling.”
Experts have been praising her decision as the best choice given the circumstances. “Judge Cannon’s ruling is correct and obvious, and avoids her getting reversed for a 3rd time by the Eleventh Circuit,” former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann wrote on X/Twitter. “Predict she will also reverse herself on full disclosure of witness names/statements (for same reason). Many more motions for her to decide…”
“Had Cannon ruled in Trump’s favor she would have [been] plainly wrong,” former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance said. According to Vance, Special Counsel would have had no option but to appeal leaving Cannon to endure a reversal and maybe even a dismissal.
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Cannon is allegedly planning to hold a pivotal hearing in the case on Friday. During the hearing, she will go over evidence disputes between prosecutors and the defense, and the trial schedule.
She will also cover a related spat over proposed redactions in court records. This case is one of four criminal cases Trump is facing. And like this one, they are not all going in his favor.
His case involving E. Jean Carroll, for instance, turned him into a laughing stock on the internet recently. Netizens enjoyed trolling the former president for claiming he was too rich to pay the fine.
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Trump lost two defamation trials against Carroll, with a jury finding him guilty in the first for sexually assaulting her. He is to pay $5 million in the first trial and more than $83 million in the second.
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