MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Tuesday questioned whether Judge Aileen Cannon has the authority to block the United States Department of Justice from releasing special counsel Jack Smith's report on his two criminal investigations into President-elect Donald Trump.
"It is not clear... whether she has jurisdiction because earlier this year, she threw out the Mar-a-Lago documents case explaining that, from her reasoning, Jack Smith did not have constitutional authority to bring that prosecution under the appointments clause of the Constitution," she said.
"And so there is no basis here to block the report in part because it is not clear there is a case or controversy in front of her, but if there were, the argument that Trump is making that presidential immunity also precludes the release of the report is a stretch of the Supreme Court's ruling that a president cannot be prosecuted for acts having to do with his presidency while he is a sitting president."
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Legal analyst Barbara McQuade, meanwhile, speculated that Cannon's move was simply to help Trump run out the clock until his inauguration on January 20th.
"I don't think she has any jurisdiction, but delay is the name of the game," she said. "If they can stop the clock until January 20th then the Department of Justice will be a Trump appointee and they will kill the whole thing. That's the goal here."
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