Trump-appointed judge is ‘sabotaging’ Mar-a-Lago criminal case in his favour, legal experts claim

The judge in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case is sabotaging the proceedings in favour of former president, Donald Trump, two legal experts have argued.

Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, now counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard, wrote for Slate that “it’s deeply offensive to the rule of law for judges to bend the law to benefit those who put them on the bench. Sadly, Cannon does just that”.

Mr Trump appointed Judge Cannon in 2020. She was confirmed by the Senate in the days following that year’s election.

On Friday, Judge Cannon issued a ruling rejecting a request from special counsel Jack Smith that she order Mr Trump to say if he will use an “advice of counsel” defence before the proceedings move on to the trial, which is scheduled for 20 May.

The advance notice would speed up the trial as defendants using that defence will need to provide further discovery to the prosecution. The “advice of counsel” defence removes attorney-client privilege, meaning that defendants must share all their communications with their lawyers.

Judge Cannon’s order rejecting the request states that the special counsel’s motion was “not amenable to proper consideration at this juncture, prior to at least partial resolution of pretrial motions” and additional discovery.

“Sound innocuous? It’s anything but,” Mr Tribe and Mr Aftergut write. “Instead, it’s part of a pattern we’ve already seen of Cannon laying the groundwork for delaying Trump’s trial – until it’s too late for a jury to be empaneled and the case tried to verdict before the election. That is, of course, just what Trump has been angling for.”

They add that Judge Cannon issued an order in November