For the second time on Thursday, a judge turned down former President Donald Trump’s request to drop charges against him, this time in his federal case about his supposed mishandling of secret documents.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, chosen by Trump, rejected a motion from Trump’s legal team that argued the former president had the authority to take secret documents with him to Mar-A-Lago after he left office in 2021, referring to the Presidential Records Act. However, according to CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz, Tierney Sneed, and Katelyn Polantz, the order left open the possibility that Trump can still use the PRA as an argument in his case.
Cannon’s court order also pushed back on Special Counsel Jack Smith, who responded to a recent order by Cannon regarding jury instructions with a blunt request to make a final ruling so prosecutors could appeal to the 11th Circuit. Cannon wrote that Smith’s “demand” was “unprecedented and unjust.”
While discussing the breaking news on CNN, chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid explained the significance of Cannon’s latest ruling:
This is significant not only because she’s rejecting this effort to dismiss the case, but it’s notable that she is making a decision because her approach to this case has been unusual. It has come under scrutiny. Well, an analysis done by our colleagues Tierney Snead and Hannah Rabinowitz shows that she has over a dozen matters, decisions to still decide outstanding in this case. And of those, eight of them are other motions to dismiss. And the longer it takes her to decide those, the less likely it is that this case will go before November.
Earlier on Thursday, Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over Trump’s Georgia election interference/RICO case, also dismissed Trump’s request to dismiss the charges against him.
Watch the video above via CNN.
