Clever: Jack Smith’s New Legal Filing Will ‘Highlight Judge Cannon’s Bias,’ Experts Say

Special Counsel Jack Smith is one smart dude, I have to admit. He’s tougher than nails and hangs on with pit-bull tenacity just when we need him to do so. And now, he’s introduced a brand-new filing that ought to cause a little sweat to break out on Judge Aileen Cannon’s brow. Or at least I hope so anyway.

This filing is carefully crafted to expose Cannon’s habit of continually ruling in favor of defendant Donald Trump, legal experts said Friday, per Raw Story.

Earlier Friday Smith asked Judge Cannon, who is presiding over the case, to gag Trump as a way to prohibit him from making any additional statements that could endanger law enforcement officers. Smith filed this because Trump once again repeated a false conspiracy theory that mischaracterized the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago resort as an attempt to take his life.

And Cannon is going to have to mind her judicial p’s and q’s here because the filing, as Raw Story notes, “is a trap for Cannon, who has been accused of slow-walking the ex-president’s case such that the trial has been indefinitely postponed.

This was a ratty thing for her to do, so if she does get trapped it’s what she deserves. People in this country had every right to see Trump’s feet held to the fire before November and now that’s not going to happen. Because of what she did.

And this clever ploy, notes Roger Parloff, a senior editor at Lawfare, noted that the special counsel’s new motion, seeking to quash the lies that keep circulating about an assassination attempt, “is crafted to highlight Judge Cannon’s bias and hypocrisy if she fails to take action.”

“the motion twice cites cannon’s order ‘ecf 101’ in which she, on her own, invoked her ‘independent obligation to protect the integrity of this judicial proceeding’ in order to probe a dubious defense allegation of a prosecutor’s ethical breach,” parloff said. “jack’s new motion challenges cannon to act on trump’s outlandish attacks on the fbi — which have already triggered an armed attack on an fbi office in cincinnati — with a fraction of her solicitude for policing special counsel’s ethics.”

There are others who laud Smith’s latest effort, including Andrew Weissmann, the former top prosecutor on former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

“Smart move by Smith as judge cannon won’t be likely to grant the gag order, will show her patent bias, and smith can then appeal to the 11th Circuit,” Weissmann said Friday.

Cannon is in a tough spot either way you look at it. If Weissmann is correct and she fails to impose a gag order on her revered client, the judicial cat is out of the bag. But even in the unlikely event that she does gag Trump, most people who have been following these shenanigans already know this judge, appointed by Trump, is continually in his corner.

I think she’s going to look bad either way.