A major court ruling that went against former President Donald Trump in his classified documents case will be re-examined and could be reversed.
The ruling against Trump was described by The New York Times as a “hugely consequential legal victory” and one of special counsel Jack Smith’s “most significant legal successes.”
Should U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon reverse the ruling, the Times said such a ruling “could deal a serious blow to the obstruction charges in the indictment of Mr. Trump.”
The ruling centers around what is known as the crime-fraud exception, in which the government is allowed to end run attorney-client privilege if it can prove legal advice was used to commit a crime.
Last year, a federal judge in Washington ruled that advice from Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran was used by Trump to obstruct efforts to secure classified documents in Trump’s possession.
Trump’s legal team sought to push back against that ruling.
“There is nothing unduly prejudicial or legally erroneous about Defendant Trump’s fact-development request as brought in the Motion to Suppress,” Cannon wrote Thursday in her ruling.
She said Trump’s motion “makes clear that he disputes important factual findings reached by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in the grand jury proceeding” connected with the case.
Should Judge Cannon nullify the prosecution’s earlier victory?
Cannon wrote that “although the Special Counsel may wish to avoid any cross-examination of any of its witnesses in a pre-trial evidentiary hearing—and although the Court acknowledges that prosecutorial interest—that position cannot overcome a defendant’s right to make a proper, even if tailored, factual record on an important claim of privilege with constitutional dimensions.”
Noting Smith’s objections, she wrote that there was “a difference between a resource-wasting and delay-producing ‘mini-trial,’ on the one hand, and an evidentiary hearing geared to adjudicating the contested factual and legal issues on a given pre-trial motion to suppress, on the other.”
Judge Aileen Cannon gives Donald Trump more chances to challenge key evidence in his classified documents case and pushes back on the idea that more hearings delay the case https://t.co/YJn8Ev0ZCU
— CNN (@CNN) June 27, 2024
“But it is an evidentiary hearing nonetheless, and it is before this Court—in this post-indictment context— to make factual findings on contested questions pertinent to the … crime-fraud exception,” she wrote.
Cannon also said a hearing should be held on concerns from the Trump team that terms surrounding the search of Mar-a-Lago in 2022 were too vague.
She wrote that “the Court determines that some of the terms in that document (e.g., ‘national defense information’ and ‘Presidential Records’), do not carry ‘generally understood meaning[s]’ such that a law enforcement agent, without further clarification, would have known to identify such material as ‘seizable’ property.”
Cannon did not set dates for the hearing.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Cannon is simply acknowledging the flaws in the Justice Department’s case against Trump.
“The entire documents case was a political sham from the very beginning, and it should be thrown out entirely,” Cheung said, according to CNN.
