U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has faced mounting criticism from the left for her management of the case involving classified documents against former President Donald Trump, issued a three-page order on Thursday reprimanding special counsel Jack Smith for his recent filing.
Smith contended that Cannon was following an incorrect legal basis concerning jury instructions related to the Presidential Records Act and urged her to make a prompt decision on the matter to allow for an appeal if she sided with the ex-president. Furthermore, he asserted that she was operating under a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” in her request for conflicting 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.”
“There is no basis in law or fact for that legal presumption, and the Court should reject Trump’s effort to invent one as a vehicle to inject the PRA into this case,” he concluded.
JUST IN: An extraordinary filing from Jack Smith tonight that is almost incredulous at how legally incorrect Judge Cannon's jury instruction scenarios are re: Trump's claim that he designted reams of classified info as "personal" on the way out of the WH.https://t.co/lmmI1dvWDb pic.twitter.com/grnmBsGwJC
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 3, 2024
According to the Washington Post, Smith submitted a filing in reply to a court filing made by Trump’s legal team. The filing requested that Cannon dismiss the case on the grounds that Trump is protected from prosecution by a federal records law, specifically the PRA. However, Cannon rejected Trump’s motion on Thursday. In his rejection, Cannon stated that the PRA does not offer a basis for dismissing the mishandling charges or the related obstruction charges against Trump, as he has been charged under the Espionage Act.
The outlet added:
“Even as she ruled against Trump’s motion, Cannon’s three-page order also revealed her displeasure over Smith’s characterization of her order, suggesting this may not be the last such battle in the historic prosecution of a former president and the presumptive GOP presidential candidate.”
The person appointed by Trump wrote, “The Court declines the Special Counsel’s demand for anticipatory finalization of jury instructions prior to trial, prior to a charge conference, and prior to the presentation of trial defenses and evidence, as such a demand is unprecedented and unfair.”
