Suddenly, Big Trouble for Trump Prosecutor Jack Smith
The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case rejected on Tuesday special counsel Jack Smith’s request to impose a gag order, admonishing his team for their failure to “meaningful[ly] confer” with the defense.
Trump’s attorneys aired their frustration Monday night with prosecutors’ decision to file the motion before the Memorial Day weekend without first conferring about the matter, asking Cannon to impose sanctions for prosecutors’ “bad-faith” decision to rush an “extraordinary, unprecedented, and unconstitutional censorship application.” Judge Aileen Cannon declined to impose sanctions but warned prosecutors in her sharply worded order that she may impose them in the future if they fail again to comply with “basic requirements,” writing that motions should not be filed “absent meaningful, timely, and professional conferral.”
“It should go without saying that meaningful conferral is not a perfunctory exercise,” Cannon wrote. “Sufficient time needs to be afforded to permit reasonable evaluation of the requested relief by opposing counsel and to allow for adequate follow-up discussion as necessary about the specific factual and legal basis underlying the motion.”
“This is so even when a party ‘assume[s]’ the opposing party will oppose the proposed motion [583-1], and it applies with additional force when the relief sought — at issue for the first time in this proceeding and raised in a procedurally distinct manner than in cited cases — implicates substantive and/or Constitutional questions,” Cannon continued.
Smith’s team asked the judge on Friday to amend Trump’s conditions of release to clarify that he cannot “make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.” (Read more from “Suddenly, Big Trouble for Trump Prosecutor Jack Smith” HERE)
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr
