Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,' a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MSNBC, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is at it again. Her latest weird move in Donald Trump’s classified documents case involves jury instructions. That may sound like a mundane subject but it’s quite important, because these instructions are what a jury will use to consider whether special counsel Jack Smith has proved his case beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Presidential Records Act shouldn’t factor into determining whether Trump’s conduct was criminal, but Cannon’s order nonetheless laid out two “competing scenarios” for the prosecution and the defense as they fashion their proposals. The first one is: And the second one is: Neither “scenario” is recognized under the law. At the very least, both risk confusing the jury as to its proper role. The second one, especially, could throw the case in Trump’s favor.
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