Jack Smith may have set the stage for getting Aileen Cannon out of the Trump confidential documents case with a new court filing.
What did Jack Smith claim in the new filing?
Smith's team wrote in its filing that Judge Cannon made a clear mistake by denying witness protection in the classified documents case.
A review is necessary to correct obvious errors and prevent obvious injustices. As explained below, the court applied the wrong legal standard and issued an order that actually exposed witnesses and others to intolerable and unnecessary risk. However, before addressing these issues, the Government responds to defendant's procedural objections (see n.1 above). Although the government recognizes that motions for reconsideration should not be used to present new evidence or arguments, Grobman, 548 F. Supp. 3d, 1348, Given the context in which this discovery dispute arose, reexamination is appropriate here.
Here, the defendants were not legally entitled to a list of government witnesses or their statements or grand jury transcripts before trial.
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Why can Aileen Cannon be removed from the Trump classified documents case?
Norm Eisen, a legal expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, thinks this could be the third strike that takes Judge Cannon off the case.
There's a lot of news, but something big happened last night. Smith has applied to Judge Cannon to reconsider his order to release the names and descriptions of some witnesses in the MAL docket case. This could be the start of Cannon being dismissed from the case under the 11 Cir bias rule.
Cannon has already had two strikes against her since she oversaw the document search. First the 11th Cir preliminarily revoked the moratorium she had imposed, and then they permanently revoked her outrageous appointment as Special Master. This latest order could be the third strike…
why? First, retrial is “an extraordinary remedy that should be used sparingly” to “correct obvious errors and prevent obvious injustices.” So the fact that Smith made this motion shows how wrong she thinks Cannon is and how dangerous she thinks her orders are.
Cannon was a Trump-appointed judge whose qualifications and potential bias against the former president were called into question in the case. Smith appears to be laying the groundwork for another appeals court slam against Cannon, and if that happens, it could finally be the end of Trump's favorite judge handling classified documents cases.
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Jason is the editor-in-chief. He is also a member of the White House Correspondent and Congressional Correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science. His graduate studies focused on public policy, specializing in social reform movements.
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