An MSNBC analyst has blasted a decision by Judge Aileen Cannon, who handled criminal proceedings in Donald Trump’s classified documents case, for temporarily blocking the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his office’s two Trump indictments.
MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin said the decision had “no basis” in law due in part to how one of Cannon’s prior decisions asserted that Smith didn’t even have the authority as special counsel to bring the classified documents case.
Cannon’s ruling Tuesday could mean that “when the 11th Circuit decides that they want to have a crack at this, that those actors would be precluded from even sharing with the 11th Circuit itself, the superior decision maker, the information about the report—or even a draft report—so that they can make a decision here," Rubin told MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell.
“It’s not clear to folks like me, Andrea, whether she has jurisdiction,” she continued, “and that’s 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.”
“And so there is no basis here to block the report, in part because it’s not clear that there’s a case or controversy in front of her,” Rubin reasoned.
“But even if there were the argument that Trump is making—that presidential immunity also precludes the release of the report—it’s really a stretch of the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year, the Supreme Court finding that a president cannot be prosecuted, as you know, for acts having to do with his presidency while he is a sitting president."
Rubin continued: “But here they are trying to say that it has to do with the transition period and therefore, during the transition period, he should also be protected and that he should be protected because this would subject him to some sort of peculiar public opprobrium.”
But, Rubin said, “our understanding is that this report wouldn’t contain any new information.”
“So for all of those reasons, it’s unclear to me why Judge Cannon has done what she has done,” she concluded.
Cannon was considered for the role of attorney general in Trump’s administration, ABC News reported in October.
