Judge Cannon approximates rationality semi-successfully

In a brief order issued this afternoon, Judge Aileen Cannon rejected Trump’s contention that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) takes precedence over the Espionage Act in Trump’s handling of highly classified documents he took from the White House and stored in various insecure locations around Mar a Lago for more than a year after he left office. Her order addressed a motion Trump had made to dismiss the charges based on the Presidential Records Act. Trump contended that the PRA gave him the right to declare that a stash of top-secret documents he took from the White House were his to possess as private property. The PRA does exactly the opposite, establishing that all documents produced as a result of official acts by a president while he is in office are the property of the government, not the person serving for four years as president.

Cannon took the opportunity of issuing the order on the PRA to fire a shot over the bow of the Special Counsel, chiding Jack Smith for the tone he took in his recent reply to Cannon’s order asking both sides in the case to consider what the jury instructions should be when it comes to dealing with the PRA. “To the extent the Special Counsel demands an anticipatory finalization of jury instructions prior to trial, prior to a charge conference, and prior to the presentation of trial defenses and evidence, the Court declines that demand as unprecedented and unjust,” Cannon wrote today in a remark that was extraneous to her order rejecting Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges based on the PRA.

Cannon included a defense of her request for potential jury instructions from the prosecution and defense as “a genuine attempt, in the context of the upcoming trial, to better understand the parties’ competing positions and the questions to be submitted to the jury in this complex case of first impression.” Cannon did not address the Special Counsel’s rejection of her characterization of the PRA as fundamentally flawed and and incorrect. The best thing that could be said about Cannon’s whiny little addendum is that she actually includes a clear reference to “the upcoming trial,” at least acknowledging that after the hemming and hawing she has done so far, there will be one.

Earlier, Trump had posted a comment on Truth Social criticizing the Special Counsel as “a lowlife who is nasty, rude, and condescending.” Typically 180 degrees out of sync with reality as usual, Trump accused Special Counsel Smith of “playing the ref” in his reply to Cannon’s previous order on the PRA, utterly missing the point that you don’t play the ref by being critical of her legal reasoning and acumen, which most legal experts contended Smith’s reply was.

Cannon’s rejection of Trump’s PRA motion should probably be seen as less a repudiation of Trump’s lame motion than it was a naked attempt to stay out of the crosshairs of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has reversed two of her previous orders in the case.