Aileen Cannon's Question Stuns Jack Smith

Judge Aileen Cannon asked the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Special Counsel Jack Smith a question about the witness list in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump during a hearing on Friday that left him stunned.

Trump has been accused of mishandling presidential records by keeping them upon leaving office and then obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them after the FBI found troves of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago home during a raid in August 2022.

He was indicted by a federal grand jury in June 2023 on 37 counts and then was charged with additional counts in a superseding indictment in July 2023. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all counts and claims that the case is politically motivated as he is the GOP frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election.

During a pre-trial hearing in Florida on Friday, Cannon, who is presiding over the case, asked Smith when the prosecution would be willing to release the witness list.

Last June, Cannon rejected the DOJ's request to keep the list of 84 potential witnesses secret. And yet, ABC News Senior Reporter Katherine Faulders said that when Cannon asked Smith about the list, "Jack Smith looked visibly shocked by the prospect of that list becoming public," in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday.

Cannon said during the hearing that the safety of the witnesses should be "top of mind," however, she said that Smith's efforts to keep all of their statements redacted in public record are "unprecedented."

David Harbach, one of Smith's prosecutors, told Cannon that there would be a time when the names of the witnesses would be made public, but "now is not it."

Harbach also said during the hearing that Smith would call about 40 witnesses to testify at the trial.

Newsweek reached out to the DOJ via online form and Trump's attorney via email for comment.

Trump and his co-defendants—Walt Nauta, who has served as Trump's personal aide and Carlos De Oliveira, who was listed in court documents as Mar-a-Lago's property manager—have been barred from discussing the case with the potential witnesses. Nauta and Oliveria have both pleaded not guilty to their respective charges in the case.

Cannon did not issue any rulings during the hearing, and she has yet to set a trial date. Smith's team has requested that the trial start on July 8, while Trump's team is pushing for the trial to begin after the November election.

"We very much believe that a trial that takes place before the election is a mistake and should not happen," said Trump's attorney Todd Blanche. "The easy solution is to start this trial after the election."

Nonetheless, the defense has offered to start jury selection on August 12. Trump did appear at the hearing on Friday but did not interact with Smith, according to CNN.