U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench by Donald Trump in 2020, denied the former President’s request to dismiss the classified documents case against him on the basis of the Presidential Records Act (PRA). Many headlines suggested it was a loss for Trump, but legal analysts including former Special Counsel Ryan Goodman believe the decision — despite its failure to dismiss — was a victory for Trump’s legal team.
Trump has claimed that the highly classified documents that he kept at his Mar-a-Lago residence (and refused to hand over to the FBI upon request) were “personal” — a designation that, if it were true, could alter how a jury considers the PRA argument Trump makes.
Instead of the judge saying Trump’s claim was “ludicrous,” as Goodman and most legal experts assert, she said she won’t rule on that pretrial. In other words, Cannon denied the request to dismiss, but did not wholly deny the notion that the PRA could apply.
As seen below on CNN, Goodman says that by refusing to shut down the idea that Trump could have “magically” transformed the classified documents into his personal documents — which is “not what the law says” — Cannon is allowing the possibility that the PRA argument could be sustained during the trial and that she could then “issue an acquittal” based on that conclusion which is “not appealable.”
Beneath the headlines: why Judge Cannon's "ruling against Trump" is not what Jack Smith wanted to hear.
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) April 5, 2024
I discussed @OutFrontCNN how Judge Cannon may be buying time to deep six the case later based on ludicrous legal theory that can't then be appealed. pic.twitter.com/1Gc8ubU5Pi
Goodman wrote that with the decision, “Judge Cannon may be buying time to deep six the case later based on ludicrous legal theory that can’t then be appealed.”
Goodman joins a chorus of legal commentators accusing Cannon of flawed legal reasoning and also of purposely delaying the trial. As former Justice Department attorney Alan Rozenshtein has said: “If the judge wants to drag it out, she can kind of drag it out.”
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