In a three-page ruling on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has been under growing criticism from the left about her handling of the case involving classified papers against former President Donald Trump, chastised special counsel Jack Smith for his most recent submission.
Smith asked that Cannon rule swiftly on the matter so he could file an appeal if she decided in favour of the former president, arguing that Cannon was following the “wrong” legal basis regarding jury instructions over the Presidential Records Act.
He also argued she was pursuing a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” about her request for competing jury instructions regarding the PRA.
“The PRA’s distinction between personal and presidential records has no bearing on whether a former President’s possession of documents containing national defense information is authorized under the Espionage Act, and the PRA should play no role in the jury instructions,” Smith said in the filing. “Indeed, based on the current record, the PRA should not play any role at trial at all.”
“Furthermore, Trump’s entire effort to rely on the PRA is not based on any facts,” Smith continues. “Instead he has attempted to fashion out of whole cloth a legal presumption that would operate untethered to any facts — without regard to his actual decisions, his actual intent, the unambiguous definition of what constitutes personal records under the PRA, or the plainly non-personal content of the highly classified documents he retained.”
Smith’s statement was made in response to a different court filing by Trump’s legal team, which asked Cannon to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that Smith was shielded from prosecution by the PRA, a federal records law, according to the Washington Post.
Trump filed a motion on Thursday claiming that the PRA superseded the Espionage Act, under which he is accused. According to the Post, Cannon wrote that the PRA “does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss” either the related obstruction charges or the mishandling charges against Trump.
However, the publication also noted that she objected to the tone of Smith’s filing:
In her three-page order, Cannon expressed her dissatisfaction with Smith’s portrayal of her order, even as she denied Trump’s request. This suggests that there may be more battles to come in the historic prosecution of the presumed GOP presidential nominee and a former president.
The Trump appointee stated, “As such a demand is unprecedented and unfair, the Court declines the Special Counsel’s demand for anticipatory finalisation of jury instructions prior to trial, prior to a charge conference, and prior to the presentation of trial defences and evidence.”
Cannon went on to say that it “should not be misconstrued as declaring a final definition on any essential element or asserted defence in this case” when she asked for the recommended jury instructions.
Cannon did not indicate whether she believed that the PRA could be a defense for Trump to use later. This leaves the possibility open for her or the former president to revive the issue during a trial.