According to one top constitutional scholar, Judge Aileen Cannon has made a grave, “wildly lawless” mistake that will soon serve as the “smoking gun” for her removal from overseeing DOJ-appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Espionage Act case against disgraced former President Donald Trump in connection to the infamous Mar-a-Lago stolen documents scandal, after she blatantly rejected an urgent plea from federal prosecutors to place additional restrictions on ex-President Trump.
Last week, scandal-plagued and multi-indicted former President Trump, along with his campaign and supporters, sank to a new all-time low when they began to peddle the claim that the execution of an FBI search and seizure warrant raid at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort and post-White House home was actually a plot orchestrated by sitting President Joe Biden to have Donald Trump assassinated.
Trump, of course, stands credibly accused of stealing and illegally harboring upwards of 1,000 items he took from the White House upon the tumultuous end of his presidential term — including hundreds upon hundreds of classified government documents, among those, were countless documents containing some of this nation’s most highly guarded, top nuclear secrets.
The United States government made multiple attempts to take back these materials from Donald Trump. However, the ex-president chose to instead repeatedly lie and further attempt to hide the materials. THAT is what resulted in a search and seizure warrant raid conducted by the FBI against his Mar-a-Lago compound.
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Nevertheless, Trump’s campaign released a fundraising email last week, in which they scaremongered: “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”
It is extremely important to note that Donald Trump was not even present at Mar-a-Lago when the FBI raid took place. He wasn’t even in the same state. In fact, federal officials specifically conferred with the Secret Service to ensure that the former US president was not present at the property when the search and seizure was conducted.
In the wake of this highly disturbing and blatantly false campaign talking point, DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith requested that Judge Aileen Cannon implement a gag order against the former president.
At no surprise to anyone, the Trump-appointed judge rejected that request — and one legal expert said that decision is going to be the end of Aileen Cannon on this case.
Laurence Tribe, a University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and top constitutional scholar who quite literally wrote the book (as in, a massive textbook) on US Constitutional law penned a stinging post on social media, in which he wrote, “Cannon’s wildly lawless rejection of Special Counsel Smith’s clearly correct request for a gag order against fake and dangerous claims that the FBI was ordered to assassinate him is good news. It’s the smoking gun that will finally lead to her removal from the stolen secrets case.”
Cannon’s wildly lawless rejection of Special Counsel Smith’s clearly correct request for a gag order against fake and dangerous claims that the FBI was ordered to assassinate him is good news. It’s the smoking gun that will finally lead to her removal from the stolen secrets case
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) May 28, 2024
According to reporting from ABC News, Cannon completely ignored the substance of Smith’s request and instead rejected the motion on the grounds that prosecutors should have spoken with Trump’s legal team before submitting the request.
In the motion that was rejected by Judge Cannon, prosecutors with Smith’s office wrote, “The Government moves to modify defendant Donald J. Trump’s conditions of release, to make clear that he may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”
Prosecutors did, in fact, confer with the Trump legal team but Cannon nevertheless claimed that their efforts were “wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy,” per ABC News.
“Trump’s lawyers argued that the special counsel violated Local Rule 88.9, which says both parties must ‘meet and confer’ before filing motions so the court and the parties’ time is used efficiently. In a filing Monday, Trump’s lawyers asked Cannon to strike the special counsel’s request and impose sanctions on any prosecutors involved in filing their motion,” ABC reports.
Donald’s legal team sought to delay any meeting or discussion on this matter until Monday. However, federal prosecutors pushed the issue through due to serious and credible concern about Trump’s recent, highly inflammatory remarks.
In an email sent to Trump’s attorneys, ABC reports Special Counsel prosecutor David Harbach wrote: “As we also tried to explain earlier, our judgment was that the situation your client has created necessitated a prompt request for relief that could not wait the weekend to file. We understand your position and represented to the court that you do not believe the government has engaged in adequate conferral here.”
We can only hope that Tribe’s assessment is correct and this will finally be the end of the line for Aileen Cannon.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
