The MAGA-friendly federal judge who keeps siding with Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified records case has forced prosecutors to make a stark choice: allow jurors to see a huge trove of national secrets or let him go.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’sultimatum Monday night came as a surprise twist in what could have been a simple order; one merely asking federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers for proposed jury instructions at the upcoming trial.
But as she has done repeatedly, Cannon used this otherwise innocuous legal step as yet another way to swing the case wildly in favor of the man who appointed her while he was president.
Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith must now choose whether to allow jurors at the upcoming criminal trial to peruse the many classified records found at the former president’s South Florida mansion or give jurors instructions that would effectively order them to acquit him.
Hopefully they can appeal and just provide summaries or redacted documents. Or get security clearance for jurors, sure.
There has to be a way to convict someone for stealing state secrets without sharing those state secrets publicly.
If it’s illegal to share classified documents, including to jury members, and the jury can’t convict without seeing all the info on the classified documents, then it is just legal to share classified documents, you would be unable to prosecute. That would be crazy.
I think that’s the point