The downside to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon scheduling hearings on just about every frivolous claim raised by Donald Trump’s defense is that, eventually, she will have to start making decisions. That — not just entertaining each argument, as it shifts, from the former president, but actually ruling on them — has not worked out well for her in the past and could be how special counsel Jack Smith gets the classified documents case closer to trial.
In recent days, Cannon, who was nominated by Trump in the time between his losing the 2020 election and his inciting the January 6 insurrection, has held hearings and collected filings on a range of issues raised by the defense. Among them: that the naming of a special counsel violates the Constitution; that not specifying a cap on the special counsel’s funding abrogates congressional authority; that the search warrant for Mar-a-Lago was overly broad; and that the whole case should be thrown out because some of the state secrets recovered at Trump’s property were later returned to their boxes in a different order.
