CNN’s Elie Honig said that Special Counsel Jack Smith may resort to the “drastic” step of requesting that Judge Aileen Cannon be removed from Donald Trump’s classified documents case after Smith all but rebuked Cannon in a new court filing.
In his brief, Smith chided Cannon for issuing jury instructions that he argued were based on a flawed “legal premise.”
On CNN Wednesday, Dana Bash noted that “one of the big issues” Smith has with Cannon is “the delay and the feeling clearly that the judge is playing into the defense strategy, which is to delay it so that it reaches November, and then we have the election and then maybe poof, it goes away.”
“Do you have any sense that, as part of that, he is setting the stage for a motion to get rid of the judge?” she asked Honig.
“So Jack Smith clearly has had it with Judge Aileen Cannon; I think that oozes out of this briefing. As you said, it’s quite a sensational filing from a prosecutor. I do think there is some frustration that’s obvious with the pace of this as well as the substance of it,” replied Honig. “Now, one move that Jack Smith could make here, and he sort of alludes to it in the briefing, is A. If the judge sticks by this ruling, if the judge says, ‘I am going to instruct the jury on this Presidential Records Act defense,’ then Jack Smith makes clear, ‘I will appeal that and I will appeal it now.'”
“The other thing that Jack Smith might do is ask the appeals court to remove Judge Cannon from the case,” he acknowledged. “Now, that’s quite a drastic step. It is very rarely, not never, but very rarely taken by prosecutors. And there’s no assurance that they win.”
“But the sort of irony of all of this is if Jack Smith appeals this, and if Jack Smith asks the appeals court to remove Judge Cannon, that will delay this more than anything that’s happened so far,” concluded Honig.
Watch above via CNN.
