Judge Cannon accused of playing 'Lucy-with-the-football' with Trump's trial

Reacting to a ruling from Judge Aileen Cannon that she is planning on holding to May 20, 2024 for the trial of Donald Trump for obstruction of justice charges related to stolen government documents reclaimed by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago resort, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted the Trump-appointed jurist left herself an out for a future postponement.

On Friday it was reported Cannon said that she is open to reconsidering a requested schedule for March 1 after more negotiations over classified discovery, but that the May 20 date stands.

However, as the Guardian's Hugo Lowell reported, "Judge Cannon might have only explicitly pushed back some pre-trial CIPA deadlines in the classified docs case — but this will surely have the effect of pushing back the entire *sequential* CIPA timetable, and ultimately delay the trial date itself."

Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, attorney Lisa Rubin was skeptical and compared Cannon to Lucy from the "Peanuts" cartoon strip who is famous for yanking the football away from Charlie Brown at the last moment as he prepares to kick it.

According to Rubin, "After moving the goal posts on pretrial motion practice and preserving her May 2024 trial date for now, Judge Aileen Cannon has cemented her role as the Lucy-with-the-football of the federal judiciary.

She then added, "She'll never block or tackle the government, but she'll likely postpone the classified documents trial at or after a March 2024 hearing."

"And she'll get there one small, seemingly reasonable, and/or even hyper-technical play at a time, despite it being as predictable as Charlie Brown's landing flat on his back," she quipped.