United States prosecutors involved in the criminal indictment of Donald Trump in Florida are challenging a judge’s order that they believe could sway the case in the former US president’s favor.
They issued a 24-page filing late on Tuesday as part of an ongoing case investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office.
In the filing, Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors criticized Judge Aileen Cannon for ordering that instructions be given to a future jury suggesting that Trump may have kept the classified documents as part of his “personal” record-keeping.
The judge’s order seemed to support the defense’s argument that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) allowed Trump to keep the sensitive government documents, a claim that Smith and his team have refuted.
Smith and his colleagues stated that this legal premise is incorrect and that any jury instruction to that effect would distort the trial.
This court filing was an unusual public disagreement between the prosecutors and the judge, who was nominated to the bench by Trump.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has questioned a judge’s order that appears to lend credence to a Trump defense argument [Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo]
Questions over judge
Judge Cannon, who serves on the federal court in the Southern District of Florida, has previously faced scrutiny over decisions she has made in the long-running classified document case.
In September 2022, for instance, she granted the Trump legal team’s request to have a “special master” appointed to filter through the classified documents retrieved from the former president’s home at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
Legal experts decried the move as unprecedented, and it delayed the US Department of Justice from having full access to the documents as part of its investigation. An appeals court ultimately ended the special master’s review.
In Tuesday’s court filing, meanwhile, Special…
Source from www.aljazeera.com