Two judges overseeing separate federal cases against former President Donald Trump issued starkly different interpretations of each other’s minutes regarding access to sensitive material.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a request by Trump’s legal team for access to a portion of government testimony against the president marked as classified in a case accusing the former president of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Meanwhile, in south Florida, US District Judge Aileen Cannon, refuse to pick more blankets restrictions on access Trump’s co-defendant’s legal counsel needs to obtain some of the classified information in question for the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
“So once again, we are left with [the special council’s] broad and unconvincing theory, that the Court must change the meaning of the word ‘defendant’ to, essentially, ‘defense counsel to the exclusion of the defendant.’ The court refused to do so,” Cannon wrote in a 15-page order.
Cannon’s order is specific to Trump’s valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago maintenance chief Carlos De Oliveira, who have also been indicted in the classified documents case.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, is generally seen as friendly with the former president’s legal team in the Mar-a-Lago case. US District Court for Southe/AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump has denounced various allegations against him. as a “witch hunt” and election interference.AFP via Getty Images
Cannon further directed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Team to make a request to expunge portions of the file from confidential discovery “from any defendant” during a pre-trial motion.
“This order does not allow the disclosure of any confidential information to any defendant outside the terms of the existing protection order,” he stressed.
Smith’s office is leading both the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago document cases.
During a hearing on the timeline for the case on Wednesday, Cannon also signaled that he sympathized with Trump’s push to delay the trial, which was scheduled for May 2024.
“I have a hard time seeing how this work can be accomplished in this compressed time frame,” Cannon said.
Trump, 77, is scheduled to go to a separate hearing on March 4, just one day before the Super Tuesday presidential primary, for the January 6 case against him that was tried by Chutkan.
In his order Wednesday, Chutkan agreed that federal prosecutors could withhold “certain classified information” from Trump’s defense team.
Judge Tanya Chutkan has bailed out Donald Trump’s legal team in the past. Recently, he reimposed a partial gag order against the former president.AP
“The government is authorized to withhold from discovery the classified information set forth in its motion, and to provide the defense with the unclassified summaries set forth in its motion,” Chutkan wrote in the five-page order.
Last month, Trump’s legal team requested “lawyer’s eyes only” access to the classified material.
Documents with classified markings are stored at Mar-a-Lago. AP Boxes of records are kept in the bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as seen in the indictment.AP
The exact nature of the classified material in the Jan 6 case is not fully known. The classified documents in the Mar-a-Lago case largely relate to records Trump allegedly kept from his presidency after leaving the White House.
In both cases, Chutkan and Cannon ran afoul of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CHIPA).
“At the outset, it is emphasized that the defense has not identified a case in which any court has ordered the relief they seek here, and this court is not aware of it,” Chutkan wrote in his order.
“Other than certain provisions of CIPA, it is understood that Congress did not intend in CIPA to weaken or expand the rights of criminal defendants or to change existing standards relating to the use or receipt of information in such cases” Cannon wrote.
Trump faces a total of 91 criminal charges including four charges in the January 6 case, 40 charges in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, 34 charges from Manhattan, and 13 charges in the Georgia election case.
The former president vehemently denies wrongdoing across the board and has pleaded not guilty in all pending cases.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
