Aileen Cannon's 'Snarky' Trump Ruling Called Out by Former Prosecutor

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents case has been criticized by a former prosecutor after she ruled in favor of the former president's co-defendants in the case.

Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann was reacting to the ruling from Judge Aileen Cannon that two people charged alongside Trump in the federal investigation—aide and valet driver Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira—should be allowed to review some of the classified evidence provided to the defense under discovery, which forms the center of the case.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges over allegations he illegally retained top secret and sensitive materials after he left the White House in January 2021, and then obstructed the federal attempt to retrieve them. Nauta and de Oliveira have also denied allegations they sought to conspire with the former president to obstruct the investigation into Trump's possession of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

While sharing Wednesday's ruling which criticized arguments from Special Counsel Jack's Smith's team on X, formerly Twitter, Weissmann said the decision "goes straight for the capillaries" while condemning the language used by the judge.

"Almost pointless discussion, when so many real issue are left undecided," Weissmann wrote. "And her language is far too snarky for a federal judge."

The ruling from Cannon hit out at the federal prosecutor's attempts to restrict Nauta and de Oliveira from reviewing the classified discovery while citing section 3 of the Classified Information Procedures Act [CIPA]. The section requires Cannon court to issue an order to protect against the disclosure of any classified information disclosed by the government "to any defendant in any criminal case."

Cannon rejected these calls and suggested that Section 3 of the CIPA statute is not applicable in this way as Section 4 "specifically refers" to discoverable information being made available to the defendant without the information being disclosed.

"So again, we are left with the [special counsel's] broad and unconvincing theory, which is that the Court must change the meaning of the word 'defendant' to mean, essentially, 'defense attorney to the exclusion of defendant.' The Court declines to do so," Cannon wrote.

"'Defendant' means what it says—defendant—and although providing discovery to a defendant reasonably contemplates the defendant's retained or appointed agent reviewing the information too, it does not support the very different proposition that 'defendant' means 'not defendant.'

Cannon also said in her ruling that Smith's office "[lacks] merit," and reaffirmed the protective orders regarding classified information that were previously issued in the case.

The Special Counsel's office declined to comment when contacted by Newsweek.

Elsewhere, Cannon also indicated she is open to moving the classified documents trial beyond its current start date May 2024. In a hearing on Wednesday, Cannon suggested the timing of the other criminal investigations involving Trump may complicate the current trial schedule.

"I'm just having a hard time seeing how realistically this work can be accomplished in this compressed period of time, given the realities that we're facing," Cannon said.

Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary, and his legal team have frequently called for the classified documents trial to be pushed back until after the 2024 election.

If Trump wins the next election, he could conceivably pardon himself if found guilty in the federal trial once he enters the White House, or have the case thrown out all together.