Cannon order

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified-documents case issued an unusual order late Monday regarding jury instructions at the end of the trial — even though she has not yet ruled on when the trial will be held, or a host of other issues.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon instructed lawyers to file proposed jury instructions by April 2 on two topics that are related to defense motions to have the indictment dismissed outright.

[...]

[S]he sounded skeptical that Trump’s attack on the Espionage Act, or his embrace of the Presidential Records Act, were strong enough to save the former president and likely 2024 Republican White House nominee from a criminal trial. At the same time, she suggested that aspects of Trump’s arguments might be valid enough to come into play during jury instructions.

Juries are instructed on how to weigh the evidence just before they begin deliberating, so Cannon’s focus on this topic suggests she is not only thinking ahead to a trial of the former president, but already zeroing in on the end, rather than the beginning, of such a proceeding.

  WaPo

Well, yes. She's determined to get him off the hook.

Her two-page order, however, also suggests an openness to some of the defense’s claims that the Presidential Records Act allows Trump or other presidents to declare highly classified documents to be their own personal property. National security law experts say that is not what the law says, or how it has been interpreted over decades by the courts.

[...]

Cannon asked the prosecutors and defense attorneys to consider two different hypothetical situations, writing: “the parties must engage with the following competing scenarios and offer alternative draft text that assumes each scenario to be a correct formulation of the law.”

WTF?

Confusingly, she added in a footnote that any “separation of powers or immunity concerns shall be included in this discussion if relevant.” Immunity is a topic for judges to decide, not juries, so it was not immediately clear what that language in Cannon’s order meant.

[...]

[The] second hypothetical [whether Trump could categorize the records in question as personal] would appear to be one in which Trump seemingly could not be convicted under almost any set of facts of improperly possessing classified documents.

[...]

After the hearing last week, Cannon issued a short order saying that while some of Trump’s arguments about the Espionage Act warrant “serious consideration,” she thought it was too early to dismiss charges based on disagreements over the definition of some terms in the World War I-era law.

At the same time, she suggested Trump could raise the issue later “in connection with jury-instruction briefing and/or other appropriate motions,” an invitation that appears to have led to Monday’s order.

[...]

She could schedule additional motion hearings at any time.

And Trump's lawyers will undoubtedly continue to file one ridiculous motion after another knowing she'll grant hearings and arguments on them all, delaying the trial indefinitely.

Fingers crossed.

UPDATE 03:18 pm:

UPDATE 03/20/2024:

Oh, gee, what a surprise.