Judge Cannon schedules private conference with Trump lawyers to discuss documents access

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has scheduled a "sealed" conference call with lawyers representing former President Donald Trump in the federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith on classified national defense information recovered from Mar-a-Lago.

The call, which will take place on Friday at 3:30pm ET, concerns "their challenge vs Special Counsel requests to withhold or redact in certain classified docs that will be turned over in discovery," reported The Guardian's Hugo Lowell.

This comes shortly after Cannon denied requests by Trump's lawyers to consolidate a large number of filings into one, which was a win for Smith, who warned such a move would tie up the court even longer in reviewing surprise legal theories from Trump and other defendants.

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It also comes as Smith urges Cannon to reconsider her order to turn over discovery documents that could potentially reveal identities of witnesses in a way that would give Trump the ability to engage in witness tampering.

That order, in particular, enraged some legal experts, and even had some suggesting Smith had the ammunition he needs to go to a higher court and ask that they force Cannon off the case.

Cannon, who was herself appointed by Trump, has repeatedly triggered controversy throughout the case by intervening in ways that appear to one-sidedly benefit the former president. Before the indictment against Trump was even handed down, Cannon tried to block the FBI from reviewing classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago pending review by a special master, which interfered with a parallel counterintelligence investigation into whether any of the information Trump had in his resort was compromised.

Ultimately, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, including two other judges Trump had appointed, ruled against her, ordering her to allow federal authorities access to the recovered documents.

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