(TruthAndLiberty.com) – U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon has backed special counsel Jack Smith in his efforts to block former President Donald Trump’s legal team from having access to certain documents as they prepare for his legal case.
The Classified Information Procedures Act gives the option to prosecutors to summarize or redact some portions of classified discovery material before it is handed over to defendants. For the most part, Cannon has provided her approval to the Department of Justice after they made a request to do so. However, she has not yet made a choice on other documents relating to the Mar-a-Lago case.
Smith has been allowed to make redactions, substitutions, and even delete parts from two categories of classified documents as well as “most” of a third category.
Cannon has written that so far there is no classified information that has not already been approved for release from the Special Counsel, which should be disseminated because of the unclassified order. She has also stated that additional hearings are necessary in order to decide if the two sensitive intelligence reports that are related to one of the documents that Trump has been accused of taking and keeping at Mar-a-Lago should be withheld in the discovery process.
In December there was a disagreement between Smith and Cannon, as the former had insisted that unsealing some of the details was going to reveal the “contours and extent” of the plans of the government to delete classified information from the discovery process.
However, the Friday ruling is still not considered a complete win for Smith. Cannon’s ruling has come as she faces scrutiny over the way she has handled the case after she issued a ruling this week calling for both parties to draft proposed jury instructions.
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