Judge Cannon just gave 'a good sign for DOJ' in Trump's docs case: legal analyst

While the dates Judge Aileen Cannon outlined are bad news for scoring a pre-election trial over Donald Trump's document case, there was one silver lining, according to a legal analyst.

Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell pointed out that special counsel Jack Smith had proposed March 18 for Trump to file his notice under Section 5 of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA).

Responding to the post, "Secrets and Laws," a self-proclaimed ex-CIA lawyer, pointed out there doesn't seem to be a chance that Cannon will grant Trump's demand for "classified discovery."

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"If Cannon was going to grant Trump's motions to compel classified discovery, or to include the [intelligence community] in the scope of the prosecution team, it wouldn't make sense for her to schedule Trump's Sec. 5 notice for less than a month from now," the account explained. "So perhaps a good sign for DOJ, but who knows?"

The other point they made was that Cannon granting such motions means the Justice Department must search for more records, find them, review them, and work on the necessary CIPA protections.

"That would take well more than a month," the analyst wrote. "Trump's team would want to see these records before issuing its Sec. 5 notice (info it wants to use at trial). A court can always have multiple rounds of Sec. 5 notices for info that's produced later on, but that's not very efficient. She's waited this long (for no good reason), so it seems weird to have the notice deadline in just a month if she's about to grant a bunch more discovery."

In her filing, Cannon says that her deadline only relates to "discovery production to date."

"So, she just might not care about having multiple Sec. 5 notices," the account continued. "This tea leaf reading only applies to classified discovery, not [unclassified] discovery (which isn't bound by CIPA Sec. 5)."

Still, the lawyer explained, prosecutors asked for a March 18 trial date and if Cannon chooses May 9 but doesn't allow for any additional discovery before then, the "delay will have been for no good reason — other than giving Trump's team more time with the docs. Sigh."

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