The Looming Standoff in Trump’s Classified Documents Case

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Earlier this week, the federal judge overseeing the case concerning former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents issued a ruling that many legal experts found odd—a refrain heard repeatedly this week by The Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett–the author of the newspaper’s “Trump Trials” newsletter–who joins The New Abnormal this week to discuss what happens next in the contentious case.

Judge Aileen Cannon has asked both sides to prepare for a trial in which jury instructions include one of two options: Either jurors will be “permitted to examine” every top secret record Trump allegedly swiped to determine whether it should be classified as his “personal” property, or jurors must be told that “a president has sole authority… to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency.”

The ruling essentially serves as an ultimatum: The jury will be given access to sensitive national security secrets, or Trump wins.

“I think this order is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen,” Barrett said Thursday. “Overwhelmingly all the people I talk to describe their own confusion, their own bewilderment and their own, frankly, deep concern that this is not how this is done, ever.”

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The move means that Special Counsel Jack Smith may have to argue with Judge Cannon—something he’s been loath to do thus far—or even appeal the ruling to a higher court in an attempt to get it struck down.

Adding Smith might find himself in “a bit of a standoff,” Barrett added: “My sense is that the prosecutors in fact do not want to fight with this judge—but I think a ruling, an order like this one, in some people’s minds signals that they may have to.”

Plus, a conversation with Cornell Belcher, the founder of Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies, about all the reasons to ignore recent polling which shows Black and Hispanic voters may be moving to the right.

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“If you look at the actual data on elections, there’s no evidence of that,” Belcher said. “Yet we are here talking about a polling number, which is not predictive and we know is gonna change.”

Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

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