The 11th Circuit is poised to 'slam' Judge Aileen Cannon for protecting Trump: former prosecutor
During an appearance on Saturday with MSNBC's Ali Velshi, former federal prosecutor Cynthia Alksne claimed she expected the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to come down hard on U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon over rulings that have protected Donald Trump from a Department of Justice investigation.
Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by the former president just before he lost the 2020 election, has been under scrutiny for a series of rulings that have baffled legal experts and stymied DOJ investigators looking into Trump whisking away stolen government documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Before Thanksgiving, Trump's attorneys were put on the spot by the 11th Circuit judges who appeared more than skeptical of Cannon's pro-Trump rulings, and legal experts expect things to end badly for the former president's lawyers when their ruling comes down -- possibly next week.
Speaking with the MSNBC host, Alksne said she expected Cannon to be on the receiving end of a devastating rebuke.
"I think that it sounds like after reading the transcript of the appellate hearing in the 11th Circuit that they are going to get rid of the special master and they are going to slam this federal judge [Cannon] who put a wrinkle in the process that was totally unnecessary," she began.
"And that will speed up the process and allow the government to really dive into those documents because, remember, it is not only -- when you look at this case to a prosecutor -- it is not just does he have the documents, where they willfully maintained and did he not return them when he was asked to. You also have to have sort of a global outlook on it like, why did he do it?" she elaborated.
"In order to do the prosecution, you kind of want to know that," she added. "Is it an ego thing, as somebody leaked from the Justice Department or in anway did those documents make it into the stream of his financial considerations? Is that why he ended up with these deals in the middle east? Has Jared Kushner seen the documents? Who has touched them, who has seen them, who knows about them, who has used them?"
"The sooner we get rid of the special master process, or we complete it, the sooner we can get to that point and we can move forward with the prosecution," she added.
Watch below or at the link:
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