The Trump-appointed judge presiding over the former president's classified documents case agreed earlier this week to protect the identities of potential government witnesses, a move that one legal expert argues is a product of her realizing — by earlier siding with Trump's legal team — she was on the wrong side of the law.
Judge Aileen Cannon's reversal came after special counsel Jack Smith had argued that redacting witness identities was necessary to protect the witnesses from harassment. She had previously denied such a request, a decision that, if upheld, some experts believed could cost the judge her job.
Harry Litman, a former deputy assistant attorney general who is now a legal analyst with the Los Angeles Times, said in a video on his YouTube channel this week that Cannon "overruling herself" was the inevitable consequence of earlier bowing to pressure from Trump's legal team to fight a losing battle. "The Trump team basically snookered her into applying the totally wrong legal standard and therefore granting their motion to release information to the public at this discovery stage," he said.
The Washington Post noted that Cannon's decision comes after months of tension with federal prosecutors, in which the two repeatedly clashed over the contours of the case. Cannon has come under scrutiny for a series of unorthodox rulings and allowing a pile-up of legal and logistical issues to delay the trial. Though Cannon appeared to reluctantly side with Smith on the witness issue, her 24-page opinion admonished the prosecution over their procedural handling of the request and arguments that "could have and should have been raised previously."
Litman said that Cannon's grudging concession shows that the prosecution had the better side of the argument. "They had her dead to rights," he said. "And she could have just graciously said 'Oops, my bad!' but she didn't. So it's very defensive and thin-skinned, but it does force [Cannon] to do the right thing and change the tune."
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