'Time is up': Ex-prosecutor says Trump's 'past is catching up with him' on classified docs

Donald Trump may be close to a legal reckoning on the classified documents case, according to a legal expert.

Joyce Vance, the former United States attorney who has become one of the most widely read legal analysts of the Trump era, says a key appeals court is signaling it has lost patience with the judge who has spent more than a year blocking the release of the classified documents portion of Jack Smith's special counsel report — and that Trump's strategy of rigging legal proceedings in his favor by eliminating genuine opposition is running out of time.

"It's starting to look like time is up," Vance wrote in her Civil Discourse Substack on Saturday.

At the center of the dispute is Volume II of Smith's report, which covers the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who has consistently ruled in his favor, blocked the report's release on Inauguration Day and refused for months to act on requests by American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute to intervene and argue for its release. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals previously cited "undue delay" from Cannon and ordered her to rule within 60 days. She ruled against the media organizations, and they appealed.

Now the Eleventh Circuit has ordered a full briefing schedule, with all briefs due by July. Vance notes the order was signed by Judge Nancy Abudu, a Biden appointee, and says the court's track record of correcting Cannon's errors gives her reason for optimism.

Vance connects the classified documents fight to the IRS slush fund case, arguing both share the same fatal flaw: Trump occupying both sides of the legal dispute, with the Justice Department acting as his ally rather than a genuine adversary. Courts, she argues, are finally forcing him to face real opposition.

"Trump's past is finally catching up with him," Vance writes.