Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified docs prosecution of Donald Trump Tuesday because the DOJ failed to correctly preserve key evidence. The ruling is a big blow to Smith and the DOJ and throws the future of their case into doubt.
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It’s yet another holdup in the trial and one that could decide whether this matter is resolved before election day:
The suspension marks yet another delay in a prosecution where Cannon has yet to even set a new trial date, casting further doubt on the chances the case will come before a jury ahead of the election.
It also scuttles an important discussion over which classified documents Trump and his co-defendants wish to use at trial — a battle now waylaid by the former president even as prosecutors argue “intra-box document sequencing” has no bearing on how the defendants will build their case.
Cannon did not set a new deadline on the matter, and settling how classified documents will be handled at trial could itself take months to resolve.
Smith’s team humiliated itself when they admitted to the judge that he had tampered with the documents, which is incredibly ironic given that’s what the Special Counsel is attempting to jail the former president for.
More:
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Team Confirms It Tampered With Evidence, Admits to Misleading Court
Donald Trump Jr. weighed in:
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The issue concerns the ordering of the documents—they are still in the original boxes, the prosecution argued—but then they were forced to admit they were no longer in the exact sequence they were when taken from Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate in an FBI raid in August 2022.
Oops. Perhaps we ought to sic a special counsel on you, Mr. Smith.
The trial had been scheduled to begin May 20, but Cannon said the “myriad and interconnected pre-trial” issues made that impossible. From her ruling:
“The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice,” Cannon wrote.
This isn’t the only lawfare Trump is facing from the DOJ and crusading Democrat Attorney Generals and DAs that is causing controversy:
See:
Fulton County, Georgia, DA Fani Willis is facing serious questions about her election interference case due to her apparent ethical lapses. Meanwhile, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s laughable “hush money” case over how business expenses were classified in accounting records faces headwinds because Judge Juan Merchan let porn performer Stormy Daniels prattle on about lurid matters that seemed to have nothing to do with the actual charges. This setback, though, is perhaps the biggest embarrassment yet.
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The DOJ is wiping egg off its face today.