HomeCrimeMar-a-Lago Judge Aileen Cannon slams Jack Smith on CIPA

Mar-a-Lago Judge Aileen Cannon slams Jack Smith on CIPA

Judge Aileen Cannon, special counsel Jack Smith

Judge Aileen Cannon (left) during a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight nomination hearing on July 29, 2020 (U.S. Senate via AP), Special counsel Jack Smith (right) speaks about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Aug. 1, 2023, at a Department of Justice office in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The federal judge presiding over Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents prosecution of Donald Trump issued an order favorable to the former president’s co-defendants at the expense of the special counsel — all while misidentifying the office she slammed.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, in multiple ways, said that Smith’s attempt to use the Classified Information Procedures Act or CIPA to “restrict” Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira “almost entirely from reviewing classified discovery to be produced in the case” — “placing the burden to justify otherwise on defense counsel” — is not what Section 3 of the statute is designed to do.

Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee whose special master rulings made waves at the start of the case but were overturned by conservative appellate judges, noted that her ruling “primarily” dealt with the “OSC’s proposed protective orders as to Defendants Nauta and De Oliveira,” as the protective order for Trump and his lawyers “was entered without objection except as to a conferral-location issue on which the Court overruled Defendant Trump’s objection.”

Notably, throughout the order the judge erroneously identified the prosecution as the Office of Special Counsel, an entirely different government entity that uses the acronym OSC, when the reference should be to the Special Counsel’s Office or SCO, which is the acronym Smith’s office has used in its own filings before Cannon.

RELATED ARTICLES
- Advertisment -

Most Popular

- Advertisment -
Share on Social Media