Aileen Cannon Snaps at Jack Smith's Team in Court: 'No Hijacking'
Donald Trump speaks at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago on June 5, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Trump's lawyers have claimed in court that an FBI raid on the estate was politically motivated.
Judge Aileen Cannon has strongly rejected prosecution claims that Donald Trump's legal team was trying to hijack a hearing.
"There's no hijacking," the judge said on Tuesday, adding that the hearing was about to end.
Trump is facing 40 federal charges in Cannon's court over his alleged handling of sensitive materials seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House in January 2021. He is also accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to retrieve them.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has repeatedly said the case is part of a political witch hunt against him as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Newsweek contacted Trump's attorney and Cannon's office for comment on Wednesday.
Cannon was responding to a claim by assistant prosecutor, David Harbach, that the defense was trying to take over the hearing, online forum Just Security reported.
"Whatever authorization [Trump] had while he was president doesn't matter post-presidency," Harbach said.
He was responding to Trump's lawyer Emil Bove, who told Cannon that further inquiry was necessary to uncover the political motivation behind the FBI's raid on Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.
Harbach rejected this claim and accused Trump's legal team of hijacking the hearing and introducing "allegations that have nothing to do with the defense."
Cannon, a Trump appointee, then shut down the prosecution and said the defense was not trying to hijack the hearing.
Chief prosecutor Jack Smith was in court at the time. He has repeatedly accused the defense of delaying the case until after the 2024 presidential election, when Trump was seeking to have the case thrown out of court.
Trump's lawyers had been arguing that the FBI's search warrant was invalid.
Cannon appeared to agree with prosecutors that the search warrant was valid, based on past case law.
Bove had been saying that the search warrant was invalid because it was not detailed enough.
Cannon replied, "It seems like it is, based on the caselaw that's been submitted," shortly before she ended the hearing.
Of the search warrant itself, she said: "It's clearly delineated there to search for documents with classification markings," Just Security reported.
Cannon was hearing a defense motion to throw out evidence seized from the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Tuesday was the last of three days of hearings that Cannon has set aside to hear defense motions in the case.
It began with a hearing on Friday on whether prosecutor Jack Smith's appointment as special counsel in Trump's federal cases was constitutional.
On Monday, Cannon devoted the day to hearing whether Smith's funding was lawful, and on Tuesday, she considered defense attempts to have key prosecution evidence removed from the case.
This is just part of a larger series of defense motions in the classified documents case. Cannon has said she will continue considering these until the end of July.
This has been sharply criticized by some legal analysts, such as former prosecutor Harry Litman.
In the Los Angeles Times newspaper on Monday, he accused Cannon of deliberating delaying the Trump trial until after the presidential election. He added that the Republican would reward the judge for the delays if he were to be elected president.
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