Trump critics have long questioned whether the judge could conduct Trump’s classified documents trial fairly. And at a crucial juncture, Smith signals he’s losing patience.
with her handling of the criminal classified documents case against Donald Trump, the man who nominated her to the federal bench.Smith’s office late Tuesday night filedto Cannon’s request for proposed jury instructions. The response reads as a challenge to Cannon’s jurisprudence and raises the possibility that Smith might try to go around her as the case proceeds.
He says that one version of the jury instructions Cannon requested would amount to “asking the jury to make a factual finding with no proper legal connection” to the case. He says that the other is even worse — that it “would amount to nothing more than a recitation of Trump’s PRA defense” and “would result in directing a verdict against the Government.”
“To the contrary, every witness who was asked this question had never heard such a thing,” Smith says. In both of his versions of the instructions, he includes sharp language intended to highlight the perceived absurdity. Each of the versions of instructions reads: Perhaps most important, the filing appears to be a direct challenge to Cannon. It notifies her that if she continues to insist on this, Smith’s team might try to go around her. And it urges her to act quickly on the matter to allow the prosecution to appeal before it’s too late and compromises the trial.
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