Judge Cannon blocks Trump lawyers' plan for a deluge of legal filings

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected a request by former President Donald Trump's legal team to file all of his pretrial requests in one go, telling the former president to do each as an individual filing.

Cannon is overseeing the federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith against Trump for hoarding a trove of highly classified national defense information at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida. Also charged in the case are Trump's valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira, who are accused of trying to help him hide the documents and destroy security footage that would incriminate them.

"The motion from Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche was filed late Tuesday and noted that the former president wanted to file 'at least 10 pretrial motions' not to exceed 200 pages on a variety of matters," reported Law & Crime.

Those filings include complaints about "special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment; the subject of presidential immunity — notably, a fight he has lost in every venue he has launched it so far — accusations of 'selective' and 'vindictive prosecution'; his grievances over the 'vagueness' of the statutes he has been charged under and what Blanche called 'an illegal raid at Mar-a-Lago, and improper violations of President Trump’s attorney-client privilege.'"

But Cannon was unswayed by the request, and told the legal team each issue needed to be handled in its own brief if they wished to raise it — and that they are all due by tomorrow.

“The parties then shall promptly confer on all sealing/redaction issues presented in the motions. Following such conferral, any party wishing to seal/redact anything in the pre-trial motions shall file a consolidated motion for leave on or before February 27, 2024, specifying the particular legal and factual bases for shielding pre-trial filings,” she wrote. She also ordered the defense to limit the page count of each motion to 25 double-spaced pages, not counting attachments.

This is a victory for special counsel Jack Smith, who had objected to the way Trump's legal team wanted to make the filings on the basis that they could load up the motions with "misleading" defense theories, which would potentially cause more delays as Cannon had to sift through all of them.

Notwithstanding this decision, Cannon has gained a reputation for controversial rulings that many onlookers have suggested intervene in the favor of the former president.

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Before the indictment even came down, she ordered the FBI to stop reviewing the classified information seized at Mar-a-Lago and turn it over to a special master to review if any of it was improperly taken — a highly unusual move which would have tied the FBI's hands trying to conduct a counterintelligence investigation into whether the documents were compromised. The 11th Circuit overturned this decision.

Aileen Cannon during her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on July 29, 2020, to become a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of Florida.

More recently, Cannon has made a number of procedural decisions likely to delay the trial date and make it difficult to conclude before the 2024 election. She also ordered Smith to turn certain sensitive information over to the defense that would reveal witness identities, despite Smith warning that this would create a risk of witness tampering. Some legal experts have suggested Smith now has cause to ask the 11th Circuit to remove Cannon from the case.