CNN Senior Legal Analyst Ellie Honig said Tuesday that U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon’s ruling that the appointment of a special counsel is unconstitutional has led to special counsel Jack Smith’s planned appointment to incoming Donald Trump. He said the release of the report on the president could be doomed.
President Trump and his Florida co-defendants requested Cannon. block Smith released a report on two previous federal lawsuits against Trump, alleging that the president-elect illegally stored classified information in his private residence and was involved in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results. . Mr. Honig said Mr. Trump’s legal team could use Mr. Cannon’s arguments about the constitutionality of the special counsel to argue against the release of information about the election case.
“I think [Cannon’s ruling] Mr. Trump will make this argument against Judge Cannon, but remember, all she has is the classified documents case. “There is a separate incident in Washington, D.C. regarding the January 6th indictment, so that argument does not apply,” Honig said. “But I think [Trump’s] The team will argue that the entire system of special prosecutors is unconstitutional, as Judge Cannon found. Therefore, this report cannot be made public. This takes us into uncharted territory, as there have been several challenges to the special counsel over the years in various cases, not just this one, but all have failed until Judge Cannon. I think I’ll go. So that could be the hook he’s trying to use here. ”
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Honig called President Trump’s attempt to block the special counsel’s report an “unprecedented move” given that it is first submitted to Congress before being released to the public. He claimed that there was. He said Attorney General Merrick Garland released special counsel reports, including Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s classified documents case. (Related article: ‘Very unusual’: CNN’s Ellie Honig explains what could happen with President Trump’s upcoming ruling)
“Throughout his term, Merrick Garland has been quick to release the special counsel’s reports to the public,” Honig said. “He did the same thing with the Robert Hur report on Joe Biden’s classified documents, and he did the same thing with the Mr. Durham report. They’re taking really unprecedented steps to try to stop that. Every time in our recent history, every time a report like this has been written, it’s actually been delivered to Congress, and then it’s been delivered to the American people. It has been.”
Cannon ultimately dismissed the case in July, arguing that the appointment of a special counsel violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. Mr. Smith filed an appeal immediately after the verdict.
Mr. Smith dropped the classified documents and election interference lawsuit against Mr. Trump after he won the presidential election in November, in order to uphold the Justice Department’s precedent of not prosecuting sitting presidents.
Honig said the defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, will likely receive pardons if President Trump takes office.
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