It would be if Trump hadn’t appointed Judge Cannon. She just held a hearing last week to reschedule the start date from May 20th, yet didn’t assign a new start date.
I thought she'd been smacked down and told to stop lollygagging. Man, I didn't think I could be more disappointed in our legal system but daily I'm proven wrong. Didn't Jack Smith file at the start of April to have her removed from the case?
Not yet. He’s made reference to it in a couple filings, but hasn’t actually filed yet. My guess is that it’s such a monumental request for this particular trial, he needs there to be no question that he has her dead to rights, “When you strike at the king you must kill him”.
The filings reviewed by CNN shed new light on the critical role that Walt Nauta, now Trump’s co-defendant in the classified documents case, played in giving the FBI justification to execute the search warrant on the former president’s Florida resort.
Trump has been charged by special counsel Jack Smith with criminal mishandling of national security records and attempting to obstruct justice after the federal government subpoenaed their return.
Nauta, who eventually stopped cooperating with the special counsel, is now claiming he was selectively and vindictively prosecuted because he refused to return to the grand jury for another round of testimony unless certain conditions were met, according to court pleadings he has made in the case that the judge is still considering.
Nauta was referred to as “Witness 5” in the warrant but can be identified by comparing the affidavit to the transcript from his June 2022 grand jury appearance that was unsealed in recent days, as well as to other details that have come out in the criminal proceedings.
According to the affidavit, the Justice Department sought from the Trump Organization Mar-a-Lago’s surveillance footage in the immediate days after Nauta’s grand jury testimony.
In a separate set of filings made public in the Florida federal court case, Nauta also is asking US District Judge Aileen Cannon to throw out evidence that prosecutors obtained in searches of his phone and email accounts.
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