Lawyers and former judges are baffled by an order by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, overseeing Donald Trump’s case on charges that he mishandled classified documents, and believe her instructions suggest the case will not go to trial very soon. “In my 30 years as a trial judge, I have never seen an order like this,” said Jeremy Fogel, who served on the federal bench in California and now runs the Berkeley Judicial Institute. On Monday, Cannon ordered defense lawyers and prosecutors to file submissions outlining proposed jury instructions based on two scenarios, each of which badly misstates the law and facts of the case, legal experts tell the Washington Post. She has given the sides two weeks to craft jury instructions around competing interpretations of the Presidential Records Act (PRA). While the law says presidential records belong to the public and must be given to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of a presidency, Trump’s lawyers say PRA gave Trump the right to keep classified materials as personal property.
“What she has asked the parties to do is very, very troubling,” said Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge in Massachusetts. “She is giving credence to arguments that are on their face absurd. She is ignoring a raft of other motions, equally absurd, that are unreasonably delaying the case.” Trump’s team says that under the PRA, he automatically designated the classified records at issue as personal documents when he removed them from the White House and took them to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. Prosecutors and legal experts have rejected Trump’s interpretation and said the former president’s reading of the PRA is simply wrong. Fogel said judges typically make their rulings about the laws at the heart of the case — and then determine jury instructions closer to trial time.