The MAGA-friendly federal judge who keeps siding with Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified records case has forced prosecutors to make a stark choice: allow jurors to see a huge trove of national secrets or let him go.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’sultimatum Monday night came as a surprise twist in what could have been a simple order; one merely asking federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers for proposed jury instructions at the upcoming trial.
But as she has done repeatedly, Cannon used this otherwise innocuous legal step as yet another way to swing the case wildly in favor of the man who appointed her while he was president.
Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith must now choose whether to allow jurors at the upcoming criminal trial to peruse the many classified records found at the former president’s South Florida mansion or give jurors instructions that would effectively order them to acquit him.
Playing a bit of devil’s advocate.
We have a tendency to over classify things in general. When I was in a TS SCIF, we would mark things S/TS because we were lazy and didn’t want to go through the process to see if something was subject to disclosure.
Assuming, with a great heaping serving of salt, that there is validity to Trump’s claim, I can sort of understand putting to a jury to see if the files that Trump took were in fact classified. I can see him stealing the documents simply because it had a cover sheet and not because it was valuable. While I’m sure that he absolutely took sensitive and classified information, I’m equally sure that there is probably a take out menu or two in those boxes.
The problem is that the run of the mill citizen isn’t equipped to properly classify a document. I don’t know what probative value exists in giving the documents to jurors outside of forcing the prosecution to put them in the public record.
Jurors provide no value beyond the markings even if they are over-classified. I mean I guess you could beat out the security classification guides and a derivative classification course… But even so, the president is only an OCA while in office so the point is kinda moot. I don’t think the specific document content matters, just whether or not updated SCG exists with same content, yeah?
Basically, “this line is referencing this item in the guide, the guide still says classified, ergo this is a spill”.
Im just trying to understand your experience there. So being lazy, documents could be marked S/TS. And then following on to allowing the jurybto see whether they were classified.
This sounds to me you’re suggesting the jury should verify these documents, and assuming some are marked S/TS, come to a decision as to whether it should actually be that classification and not some lower classification allowing more general disclosure?