U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has delivered another victory to President Trump in the classified documents case against him. She directed special counsel Jack Smith to effectively submit all classified materials to a jury for examination or face the possibility of a Trump acquittal by refusing to comply.
According to the Daily Beast, Judge Cannon’s ruling, issued Monday night, places Smith in a difficult position regarding presenting evidence that Trump may have acquired White House documents containing national security secrets and other highly sensitive data. Smith must now choose between allowing a jury of private citizens to examine the documents or risking a scenario where the jury might exonerate Trump due to insufficient evidence of the documents’ classified nature.
🚨 BREAKING: U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has instructed Special Counsel Jack Smith to hand over ALL classified materials to a jury for scrutiny or risk a Trump acquittal by refusing to do so.https://t.co/o2dQMUiZx4
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) March 19, 2024
Cannon provided two options for jury instructions.
Option 1:
In a prosecution of a former president for allegedly retaining documents in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), a jury is permitted to examine a record retained by a former president in his/her personal possession at the end of his/her presidency and make a factual finding as to whether the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that it is personal or presidential using the definitions set forth in the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
Option 2:
A president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency. Neither a court nor a jury is permitted to make or review such a categorization decision. Although there is no formal means in the PRA by which a president is to make that categorization, an outgoing president’s decision to exclude what he/she considers to be personal records from presidential records transmitted to the National Archives and Records Administration constitutes a president’s categorization of those records as personal under the PRA.
Leftists are losing it.
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen said both of Judge Cannon’s options for jury instructions are wrong.
Cannon is giving the parties in the Mar-a-Lago documents case 2 options for jury instructions on the PRA issue
— Norm Eisen (norm.eisen on Threads) (@NormEisen) March 18, 2024
As someone who oversaw PRA issues for 2 years in the White House, several things jumped out at me
1st, BOTH are wrong! 1/x pic.twitter.com/y8zntTiOjK
A defense attorney for the J6 defendants told investigative journalist Julie Kelly that if Judge Cannon issues these jury instructions, Jack Smith is “f*cked.”
The meltdown is on. Why?
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) March 19, 2024
As one J6 defense attorney just said to me—“if Cannon gives these jury instructions, [Jack] Smith is fucked.”
Final jury instructions are well within the purview of the court. https://t.co/zUWJcjXEoR
