MAGA judge Aileen Cannon caught in a 'trickbox' of her own making: analyst
President Donald Trump's "grand conspiracy" case against everyone who has prosecuted him in the past took a twist this week, as officials involved in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case sought clarification from Aileen Cannon, the far-right Trump-appointed district judge who ordered all findings from that case sealed, whether they can testify about it to the grand jury in Trump's case or communicate to their lawyers about it.
This entire situation has Cannon — and Trump — trapped in an impossible bind, former FBI agent Michael Feinberg told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace.
"I don't even know where to begin, but I do think it's important to remind people how crazy the grand conspiracy investigation is," said Wallace. "What is the development about the FBI agents communicated on the part of their lawyer mean?"
Feinberg said that the motion being filed here in Cannon's court is "actually quite a brilliant" thing.
"It puts Aileen Cannon in a trick box of having to overrule a very specious, untethered from the law decision she made at the close of Jack Smith's investigation, where she said, nobody can receive or talk about nonpublic information, or she can uphold her original ruling and put the Justice Department ... in the position where it has no witnesses to actually move its case forward. Those are the only two options for her."
If she wants to stay loyal to Trump, as she has in virtually every one of her prior decisions, "she's going to need to let DOJ question those witnesses in front of a grand jury," said Feinberg. "But it is well-established law, as James Olsen knows, that a witness who talks to a grand jury is allowed to talk about their testimony in public."
The upshot, said Feinberg, is that "DOJ is in the position they can push forward, encourage Judge Cannon to overrule her earlier order, but know that all of a sudden, all these scores of FBI agents are going to be talking to a grand jury and in public about the various manifold ways Donald Trump broke the law in retaining classified information to which he was not entitled. Alternatively, "Cannon can oppose the motion to clarify but lose all of its witnesses."
"There's no good option here for the government, and that's reflective of just how insane, unplanned and unstrategic this whole grand conspiracy prosecution is in the first place," he added.
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