OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Special counsel Jack Smith won a legal victory of sorts in his classified documents case against former President Donald Trump last week, but CNN’s resident legal expert said that he should nevertheless be “very worried” about the eventual outcome.
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig made these remarks after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has faced criticism from the left regarding her management of the case, addressed Smith’s recent filing in a three-page order.
In the order, Cannon denied Trump’s request to have the case dismissed on grounds that he should be protected by the Presidential Records Act, but she also ripped Smith, per the Washington Post:
Even as she ruled against Trump’s motion, Cannon’s three-page order also revealed her displeasure over Smith’s characterization of her order, suggesting this may not be the last such battle in the historic prosecution of a former president and the presumptive GOP presidential candidate.
“Where does this leave the timeline of this case, Elie?” asked CNN host Brianna Keilar.
“Well, a mess, in short,” he responded. “No way that this case was gonna get tried before the election. And now, I think we have other pending issues.”
Honig noted that some legal experts have speculated Smith could appeal to the 11th Circuit to request Cannon’s removal from the case. The higher court had previously overturned two rulings favorable to Trump made by Cannon in this case. However, Honig believes that the most recent ruling has effectively blocked that possibility.
“I actually think what the judge did today forecloses that, makes it impossible to do that because the judge said, ‘Well, we’re gonna decide when the trial happens, and maybe it’s something that will go to the jury,'” Honig continued.
“You really can’t appeal that if you’re Jack Smith. And by the way, Brie, this is why I think Jack Smith is concerned with today’s ruling. Although he won in the sense that the court did not dismiss the charges, if I’m Jack Smith – and I think Smith feels the same way – I’m very worried about this defense going to a jury because it’s confusing, because it’s complicated, because it’s technical. And prosecutors always want to tell a simple, straightforward story. And frankly, defendants want to muck things up,” he added.
“And as much as I think this defense lacks merit, I do think it could confuse a jury in a way that would worry me as a prosecutor,” he said.
Smith has charged Trump with 32 counts related to violating the Espionage Act, which includes allegations of his possession of government documents and attempts to obstruct their retrieval. The FBI uncovered the material during a search warrant executed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
Trump put pressure on President Joe Biden’s Justice Department to take action against special counsel Jack Smith following an explosive admission in a legal filing last week. Smith’s prosecutors told Cannon in a filing that some evidence was no longer in its “original, intact” form, which led to the former president’s demand that the special counsel be arrested and charged.
“Arrest deranged Jack Smith. He is a criminal,” Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social as one of several posts he made over the weekend after Smith’s prosecutors informed Cannon that there are some boxes where the “order of items within that box is not the same” as they appear in digital scans of materials in the wake of the FBI retrieving them from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022.
In another Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “It has always been clear that the ‘Documents Case’ is nothing but an Election Interference Scam concocted by Crooked Joe Biden, Deranged Jack Smith, and their Hacks and Thugs,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Now, Deranged Jack has admitted in a filing in front of Judge Cannon to what I have been saying happened since the Illegal RAID on my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida — That he and his team committed blatant Evidence Tampering by mishandling the very Boxes they used as a pretext to bring this Fake Case.
“These deeply Illegal actions by the Politicized ‘Persecutors’ mandate that this whole Witch Hunt be DROPPED IMMEDIATELY. END THE ‘BOXES HOAXES.’ MAGA2024!”
