Former federal prosecutor Kristy Greenberg appeared on “Morning Joe” on March 21, 2024, Aileen Cannon is the judge at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
A former federal prosecutor and legal analyst who previously expressed willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to the Mar-a-Lago trial judge has now changed her stance, citing a series of consistently incorrect rulings in favor of former President Donald Trump’s defense team.
MSNBC legal analyst Kristy Greenberg, a former deputy chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, pointed out the errors she sees U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon making.
“I was willing to give [Cannon] the benefit of the doubt…but she’s getting it dead wrong. And every time she gets it dead wrong, it’s always in Trump’s favor… If this were a law school exam, she would be failing.”
— @KGreenberg_ on Judge Aileen Cannon’s legal failures pic.twitter.com/2NYp2WMExh
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) March 21, 2024
“At first, I was willing to give her the benefit of the judge. She’s a new judge, she’s inexperienced, she’s taking time, and she’s trying to get it right. But, she’s getting it dead wrong, and every time she gets it dead wrong it’s always in Donald Trump’s favor,” Greenberg began. “I mean, just in the last month or so we have a ruling where she is ordering the identities of witnesses to be unsealed. There’s no trial date! There’s no need to be unsealing the identities and statements of witnesses who could be harassed and have a risk of harm.”
Greenberg further contributes to the recent criticisms of Cannon’s rulings. Greenberg criticizes Cannon’s decisions, such as not definitively resolving Trump’s Espionage Act “unconstitutional vagueness” arguments and ordering proposed jury instructions under the assumption that the Presidential Records Act allowed Trump to decide that national defense documents were personal items. On these issues, the former federal prosecutor scrutinizes Cannon’s decision to leave the door open for the defense to repeat “unconstitutional vagueness” arguments “as appropriate in connection with jury-instruction briefing and/or other appropriate motions. “Then you have her recent non-ruling that she’s gonna kick the can down the road on whether the Espionage Act is vague. It’s not vague,” Greenberg said. “It’s well-established law, the terms are clear, it was clear to Donald Trump, he was told he couldn’t keep the classified documents, that was a bad ruling.”
Finally, the legal analyst called the “jury instructions” order a “third strike.”
Greenberg criticizes the recent decision by Cannon to delay making a ruling on whether the Espionage Act is vague. She argues that it is not vague and that it was clear to Donald Trump that he couldn’t keep the classified documents, making it a bad ruling.
Lastly, the legal analyst referred to the “jury instructions” order as a “third strike.”
Greenberg expressed that if this were a law school exam, the judge would be failing.
Cannon’s recent filing prompted legal commentators to describe it as “the most bizarre order I’ve ever seen issued by a federal judge,” an act of “legal inanity,” “legally insane,” “nutty,” and a gift to the defense as a path forward to acquittal based on a misinterpretation of the law. Some lawyers suggested it was “bonkers” enough to seek mandamus from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit then and there.
Former federal judges also gave their opinions, commenting to the Washington Post on Wednesday. One referred to the order as something he had never seen in his 30 years on the bench. The other described it as “very, very troubling” — because Cannon is “giving credence to arguments that are on their face absurd” — and troubling that so many other “equally absurd” motions remain up in the air, threatening to drag out the case for no good reason.
For example, Trump’s request to dismiss based on discriminatory and retaliatory prosecution, a request to dismiss based on alleged presidential immunity, a request to dismiss on grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was illegally appointed and funded each remain undecided. The judge, a Trump appointee, has not yet ruled either on Smith’s request for reconsideration regarding the potential outing of government witnesses through discovery, an outcome that the special counsel said would be a “manifest injustice” attributable to Cannon’s “clear error.” Nor, as of Thursday morning, has Cannon ruled on Trump’s request to dismiss under the PRA.