'Hack' Aileen Cannon is 'putting lives in danger' with her demands of Jack Smith: analyst
Right-wing Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over former President Donald Trump's classified documents case, ordered special counsel Jack Smith to turn over information to the defense team that he has repeatedly warned could be used to facilitate witness tampering.
And Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern is furious about it, as he made clear on MSNBC Friday evening.
"Judge Cannon is in a special, sort of, elite class of hacks appointed by Donald Trump," said Stern. "I would add, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who recently tried to ban medication abortion nationwide. They are a new breed of Federalist Society judges that frankly we have not seen before. And they are, I think, really pushing progressives towards the end of what we can tolerate when it comes to being told, you have to respect the courts, they have the last word. Aileen Cannon is putting people's lives in danger. She is going to force Jack Smith to tell Trump who the FBI agents are who searched Mar-a-Lago. She is threatening to turn over the witness list in the Mar-a-Lago trial to the public, claiming that the public has a First Amendment right to discovery materials."
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"I don't want to get into the federal rules of criminal procedure here, Chris, but that is just wrong," Stern continued. "It is black letter law wrong. And the fact she is so shamelessly pushing this nonsense suggests to me, maybe it is time for us to adopt ... a very jaundiced eye toward certain judges who seem to be doing everything in their power and then some to help Trump avoid all accountability."
"Let's go through these two rulings," said anchor Chris Hayes. "That ruling today was ... basically saying, there's an ongoing investigation into witness tampering, right? There are witnesses who are being intimidated and threatened, and that is the reason that they can't turn this over to discovery, they essentially don't want to imperil that investigation, slash, like, facilitate further witness intimidation. Right? And she said, sorry, you've got to hand it over anyway."
"Yes, she said, this has to be subject to the usual adversarial process, with really almost no further analysis," said Stern. "She just said, it's disfavored for me to only take this into account and seal it and keep it from the defense. I really feel an obligation to just toss it out to the defense and let them do what they will with it. Completely ignoring the fact that what Jack Smith is telling her, in bright red letters, is that he is afraid that the defense is facilitating witness tampering ... and that it will further endanger the people on that list. Aileen Cannon does not care, and that is, you know, again another strike against her ability to conduct a fair trial."
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