Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday rejected Trump’s motion to dismiss the classified documents case based on the Presidential Records Act.
In February Trump’s legal team filed several motions to dismiss Jack Smith’s classified documents case.
Cannon has now denied two of Trump’s motions to dismiss Jack Smith’s lawfare case playing out in a federal court in Florida.
“The Superseding Indictment specifies the nature of the accusations against Defendant Trump in a lengthy speaking indictment with embedded excerpts from investigative interviews, photographs, and other content,” Cannon wrote in her brief order on Thursday. “Accepting the allegations of the Superseding Indictment as true, the Presidential Records Act does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss.”
Last month Judge Aileen Cannon issued a jury instruction order in Jack Smith’s classified documents case and the leftist legal analysts went apocalyptic.
Cannon gave two options for jury instructions.
The first option:
In a prosecution of a former president for allegedly retaining documents in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), a jury is permitted to examine a record retained by a former president in his/her personal possession at the end of his/her presidency and make a factual finding as to whether the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that it is personal or presidential using the definitions set forth in the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
The second option is:
A president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency. Neither a court nor a jury is permitted to make or review such a categorization decision. Although there is no formal means in the PRA by which a president is to make that categorization, an outgoing president’s decision to exclude what he/she considers to be personal records from presidential records transmitted to the National Archives and Records Administration constitutes a president’s categorization of those records as personal under the PRA.
“Cannon seems inclined to push the case to trial but is basically asking if she can stack the deck so Trump wins,” CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen said.
MSNBC’s legal reporter Jordan Rubin responded with “Judge Aileen Cannon is at it again.”
Jordan Rubin said Cannon is “apparently contemplating instructions that could effectively win Trump’s case for him…”
Jack Smith threatened to take the jury instruction fight to the appellate court.
Separately, Judge Cannon declined Jack Smith’s demands of her jury instruction order as “unprecedented and unjust.”
“Separately, to the extent the Special Counsel demands an anticipatory finalization of jury instructions prior to trial, prior to a charge conference, and prior to the presentation of trial defenses and evidence, the Court declines that demand as unprecedented and unjust,” Cannon wrote.
She continued, “The Court’s Order soliciting preliminary draft instructions on certain counts should not be misconstrued as declaring a final definition on any essential element or asserted defense in this case. Nor should it be interpreted as anything other than what it was: a genuine attempt, in the questions to be submitted to the jury in this complex case of first impression.”
NEW: Shorter Judge Cannon.
GFY Jack Smith pic.twitter.com/qsZYhWHNzM
— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) April 4, 2024
Last month Judge Cannon denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the classified documents case based on the vagueness of the Espionage Act.
A third motion based on selective prosecution is still pending.
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