Litman: Cannon's handling of Trump's classified records case just went from bad to horrible [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-20/judge-aileen-cannon-donald-trump-classified-records-case-florida-mar-a-lago-jack-smith

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As the judge presiding over the federal prosecution of Donald Trump for hoarding classified records at his Florida estate, Aileen Cannon has been a dubious influence from the start. She has consistently indulged Trump’s far-fetched legal arguments and overall strategy of delay.

But her latest order confirmed that Cannon has truly crossed the line into running interference for the former president who put her on the bench.

The order, issued by Cannon Monday evening, concerns one of Trump’s recurrent and baseless arguments for dismissal of the charges. His lawyers claim that the Presidential Records Act gave him the power to reclassify any and all records as “personal” and that he did so through the mere act of putting them in the bankers boxes he had spirited away to Mar-a-Lago.

This frivolous argument wouldn’t get anywhere in most federal courts. It’s a nonsensical reading of the act, which was designed to clarify that apart from a small set of personal possessions such as diaries, presidential records belong to the people rather than an outgoing president.

Moreover, the argument is beside the point. However the records Trump purloined are characterized, it remains a crime under the Espionage Act to willfully retain national defense information, which the documents at the center of this case clearly are.

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