'Nod to the judge': Trump aide says ex-president just tried to 'sway' Judge Cannon

Donald Trump is purportedly using flattery to help pave the way to freedom.

On Thursday, former President Donald Trump played U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's ardent defender, calling her "highly respected" after she came under criticism by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

"Deranged 'Special' Counsel Jack Smith, who has a long record of failure as a prosecutor, including a unanimous decision against him in the U.S. Supreme Court, should be sanctioned or censured for the way he is attacking a highly respected Judge, Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over his FAKE Documents Hoax case in Florida," the former president wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

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Smith's court filing earlier this week beat back Cannon's move to postpone a decision until a jury is impaneled to "rest on an unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise."

Cannon has faced questions of favoritism after she has decided that Trump's motion for dismissal based on a widely panned theory that he had autonomy under the Presidential Records Act (PRA) holds or sinks after a trial begins, thereby nixing any chance for the government to seek remedies because it would create a double-jeopardy situation.

Trump, who is the Republican presumptive nominee in the upcoming election, is facing three dozen charges involving the mishandling of classified documents that he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and for obstruction the government's effort to recover them.

He has pleaded not guilty.

While appearing on CNN's "Out Front" Alyssa Farah Griffin, who's served as White House Communications Director under President Donald Trump, peeled back Trumpworld's curtain to say that his genuflecting is intentional.

"He wants to prejudice the public or his supporters against judges he doesn't like and he wants to make them favorable to the ones that he does [like]," she said. "But also it's a nod to the judge."

"I mean, it's very similar to one of his attorneys referring to Brett Kavanaugh when he's going to be ruling on immunity, saying Trump appointed him so we think he'll be with us."

In fact, Griffin said that it's a common move to cozy up to wishful allies.

"This is something that they do and kinda put out there publicly in hopes of swaying the judges in their favor," she said. "Now of course, judges should be unbiased; that shouldn't affect them — but that's what he's thinking and saying this."

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