Needless Judge Cannon delays have Jack Smith under the gun: analysis

According to former U.S Attorney Joyce Vance, this coming Friday will mark a pivotal day in special counsel Jack Smith's attempts to bring Donald Trump to trial for obstruction of justice related to his hoarding of government documents at his Mar-a-Lago report.

After months of what Vance called "unnecessary" foot-dragging, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon has set the end of the week as a deadline for all the defendants in the stolen documents case to file responses in a discovery squabble with the DOJ.

As Vance explained on her "Civil Discourse" Substack platform, any hope that special counsel Smith will have of finally getting the trial of Trump moving is slipping away and how things go this week may dictate whether he will make a plea to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

As she wrote, the clock is ticking and Smith is under the gun.

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"Judge Aileen Cannon continues to string out the timeline, permitting this issue to unnecessarily consume weeks of briefing time," she explained. "But we are getting close to the point where she must make decisions on issues involving both unclassified and classified discovery, and the Special Counsel’s office will have to reach a decision about appealing her if the rulings are as unfavorable as they have been to date."

Vance added that the possibility that the case will go to trial before the election "would take a moon shot."

"Trump is likely to go into the Republican convention and the election without being held accountable for dangerous mishandling of classified materials—something that should be unthinkable and would have been for Republicans in the pre-Trump era," she lamented.

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