Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed a motion urging Judge Aileen Cannon to deny Donald Trump’s request for additional documents, citing a previous case Cannon won as a prosecutor.
Trump’s team seeks more materials to argue his investigation is politically motivated.
Smith argued this is an attempt to delay the classified documents trial.
He referred to Cannon’s 2015 role in a drug sting case where she successfully argued defendants need evidence before getting discovery to support claims of selective prosecution, as established by precedent.
“Most of the motion to compel is devoted to the defendant’s request for discovery to support their unfounded allegation that the investigation and prosecution of this case have been tainted by political bias, which is a straightforward claim of selective prosecution governed by rigorous discovery standards,” Smith wrote.
“A request to discover such material is, instead, ‘governed by well-settled and binding precedent in [Armstrong] and United States v. Jordan,” Smith said.
“That precedent imposes a ‘rigorous standard’ requiring a defendant to produce some evidence tending to show the existence of the essential elements of a selective prosecution claim—discriminatory effect and discriminatory purpose,’” the filing stated.
A law professor praised Smith’s “brilliant maneuver” of using Cannon’s own past ruling against selective prosecution arguments.
She said it puts Cannon in a tight spot, as the judge has little trial experience and has favored Trump in other filings.
“It’s a brilliant maneuver, particularly with a judge who had so little trial background,” George Washington University Law School professor emeritus Catherine Ross said.
“It’s not quite the same as confronting a judge with an opinion they wrote or joined. I don’t think selective prosecution comes up often. There are very few people who can pass the laugh test on claiming that. I think they have her locked in a pretty tight spot—if she were a normal judge,” she said.
Smith’s motion aims to convince Cannon to deny Trump’s team access to documents without proper evidence of political bias.
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