Even Donald Trump’s former allies don’t understand Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to block forthcoming details of special counsel Jack Smith’s case against the president-elect.
On Tuesday, Cannon caved to a request from two of Trump’s co-defendants, ruling that the Justice Department is not allowed to release Smith’s final report on two of the president-elect’s federal criminal investigations.
In an interview that night with CNN, former Trump attorney Ty Cobb said he believed that Cannon’s continued involvement in cloaking the details of the case made her one of Trump’s favorite tools.
“Why do you think, Ty, Cannon blocked the report?” asked OutFront host Erin Burnett.
“The only reason she’s shining is, she’s his tool and he polishes her religiously,” Cobb said. “He gets the results he needs from her. The Eleventh Circuit has already, as we know, over two years ago, had to admonish her extensively.”
Cannon was legally scolded by the Eleventh Circuit in 2022, when the appeals court unanimously vacated her decision to appoint a special master to oversee the documents obtained by the FBI after their raid of Mar-a-Lago. At the time, the court wrote that Cannon “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction” in the case and that the judicial system could not “write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant.
“Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so,” the appeals court added.
Cobb argued that Cannon’s heavy hand in Trump’s case had “created remedies” for the president-elect “out of whole cloth.”
“I suspect they will do so again quickly,” Cobb said, envisioning more reprimands for Cannon by the Eleventh Circuit. “They may be prepared to mitigate the stain that she is and the stain that she’s created again for the judiciary quickly on this.”
Cannon’s ruling stated that Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice, Smith, and “all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals” could not publish any part of the report until three days after an appeals court rules on the case.
It’s unclear if the Trump-appointed judge even had the authority to make such a decision, as the case is pending outside of her jurisdiction.
