Former Department of Justice attorney Andrew Weissmann, on Wednesday, weighed in on the delay in Donald Trump’s classified documents criminal case that is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
What Happened: Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, is presiding over the case, and has been accused of delaying the case so that it does not reach a verdict before the Nov. 5 election. “There’s no good news because the big picture of a Mar-a-Lago case is that she has done what I think she intended to do – which is to make sure that this case would not see a jury before the election,” said Weissmann, who served as the Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1991 and 2002, in an interview with MSNBC.
This bodes well for Trump, who may not want to see any of these cases to have a jury, the legal expert said, adding that Cannon is making sure that this is not going to happen. “Even if she ultimately gets pulled off the case by the 11th Circuit, the Court of Appeals that oversees her, it's now too late; there's just no way for an appellate court to rule on that and to have someone come in,” he said.
Weissmann said the classified document case is the most straightforward case, given it endangered America’s national security, and it can’t be more serious.
The ex-DOJ staffer also delved into the ways the judge has aided Trump. It’s big and small, he said. He noted that Cannon was reversed at the outset of the case twice by the 11th Circuit because her rulings were legally wrong. Then, in some instances, Trump may have misled her and when it was brought to her attention, she yelled at the government for how they were brought to her attention at the last minute extensions, he said.
“It really comes down to big and small, she is making errors and they're all one way and so I think that's the reason that it's really impossible to give her the benefit of [the] doubt,” Weissmann said.
When asked if the case should have been brought in some other jurisdiction, the law professor said in hindsight it is easy to look back and say Special Counsel Jack Smith should have moved to recuse Cannon earlier and not given her the benefit of the doubt. But it is difficult to remove a judge, he said, adding that “You can’t just not like a judge’s ruling and then say I want a new judge.”
Weissmann also said Smith did the right thing in terms of the venue. “I mean this is where…you see an example of President [Joe] Biden playing In straight with respect to the rule of law, and that is what Jack Smith did – which is that there was no place where all of the charges could naturally be brought,” he said.
“He played it straight, he brought it where all of the charges could be brought; He understood there was at least a one in three chance that he would get Judge Cannon and he did.”
The legal expert said, “you sort of hoped that people will take their oaths of office seriously.”
Why It’s Important: Trump has been found guilty in the New York hush-money criminal case, aka election interference case, and is awaiting sentence. He has three more pending against him.
Despite being proven guilty, Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election, has not found his support wane. In the nationwide opinion polls held after the conviction in the hush-money case, he continues to be heading for a close race against Biden. Both candidates, however, have not elicited much enthusiastic reaction from voters, with Trump’s MAGA stance and his legal travails weighing against him. As far as Biden is concerned, the pushback has been about the economy and his mental acuity to hold office for a second term.
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