CNN’s Tapper Asks If Trump-Appointed Judge Will Agree With Blistering DOJ Motion — Or Push Trial After Election

CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked his experts if Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon will agree with the DOJ’s blistering new filing, or will she push the trial until after the election?

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team took a sledgehammer to ex-President Donald Trump’s motion to delay his trial indefinitely with a blistering filing Thursday afternoon, knocking down Team Trump’s reasons for delay point by point.

On Thursday afternoon’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, anchor Jake Tapper discussed the filing with correspondent Paula Reid and legal analyst Elie Honig.

Noting Cannon was appointed by Trump, Tapper asked Honig where the judge is likely to come down on the question of delaying the trial:

REID: Yes, moments ago, they made a new filing really just ripping into the former president and his legal team and their attempts to indefinitely delay the moral of the documents trial. In that case, the special counsel accuses Trump’s team of misleading people about how much discovery, how much evidence they have to go through and saying, look, there’s no reason to indefinitely delay this. As you know, as we’ve reported, Jack Smith would like this case, to go to trial in December, the former president, his attorneys, have argue they need more time to litigate big questions, which is their right, this is a serious complex case, December would be pretty soon, but the idea of an indefinite detention, that is something they are just ripping apart in this new filing. And this is just a preview of what we’re going to see Tuesday when both sides meet in court down in Florida for the first time in front of the Trump appointed judge, Aileen Cannon, who’s going to oversee all of this.

TAPPER: And Elie, do you think Judge Cannon who, as Paula noted, was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, do you think she’s going to agree with the reasoning of the special counsel? Or do you think she’s more likely to agree that the trial needs to be delayed until after the election if you had to guess?

HONIG: Well, I think she’s unlikely to force a trial in December here. And I think once you get past December, I think it’s going to be difficult to squeeze it in before a trial. This new filing is a great example of two different parties seeing the same facts and arguing the same facts very differently. Donald Trump’s team argues factually correctly, we’ve been given over a million documents, as defense lawyers, we have an obligation to go through all of those. Jack Smith’s team now argues in its filing today, yes, but only 4,500 of them have been designated as key documents.

Both of those things are true. And so, Judge Cannon is going to have to sort it out and decide how much time to give Donald Trump’s team. But I do think it’s really important, Trump’s team makes the argument that in prior recent classified documents, those cases have taken a year and a half to three years to go from indictment to trial. And so they’re arguing it’s unfair, it deprives us of due process to force us to go to trial in 1/3 of that time in six months. So, this is firmly in Judge Cannon’s discretion.

I don’t think a December trial is likely, but we’ll see if she tries to squeeze it in before the election.

Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.