OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump may not have to go to trial for his classified documents case because of “prosecutorial misconduct,” conservative attorney and author Mark Levin believes.
He took to his GETTR and Twitter accounts to explain why he believes that Special Counsel Jack Smith has ruined his case against the former president.
“There must have been several scores of leaks against Trump involving testimony, documents, audio, etc., and they’re all obviously coming from the government. Trump’s lawyers need to file an immediate motion, with the long list of leaks as an exhibit, asking that the entire case be dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct and the government’s effort to influence the jury pool. Moreover, I would insist that the court determine whether DOJ has opened investigations into these felonies. THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW!” he said.
“Jack Smith must go to prison for this,” he said.
On Newsmax former US Attorney Francey Hakes agreed and said that the leaks were “trial by ambush.”
She appeared Tuesday on “The Record with Greta Van Susteren,” and said that the leak was presented to appear that Trump believed that “there was nothing to declassify” in some of the files he had.
“Lawyers know that there’s always more to a tape,” Hakes said. “There’s context to the tape. There’s possible editing of the tape. There’s the authenticity of the tape. All of these things have to be established before they can be admitted into evidence.”
“This is like trial by ambush, where you got someone who is obviously trying once again to put evidence out there before it has a chance to get into a court of law to make the president look bad,” she said.
Meanwhile Trump appears to have gotten his first legal victory in his classified documents case.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed to the federal bench, has denied special counsel Jack Smith’s request to keep secret a list of 84 potential witnesses whom Trump is barred from communicating with as the case proceeds, NBC News reported.
In her ruling, Judge Cannon pointed out that the prosecutors did not provide sufficient justification for why it was essential to maintain the anonymity of the names. Moreover, they failed to explain why redacting or partially sealing the document would not be an adequate alternative, she noted.
Trump’s legal team took “no position” on the government’s motion, Cannon noted. However, they retained the right to object to certain aspects of it, such as its execution or implementation, she said.
NBC News noted further:
At Trump’s arraignment this month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman ordered Trump to sign a bond prohibiting him from speaking to certain witnesses, except through his attorneys. Goodman also asked Smith’s team to provide a list of the witnesses Trump would be barred from communicating with directly.
In a filing Friday, the government said it had provided Trump’s attorneys with the list, and asked that the former president and Walt Nauta, a Trump aide and alleged co-conspirator in the case, sign an acknowledgement that they had received the list.
“In order to implement Judge Goodman’s special condition of release, the government hereby moves to file the list of witnesses subject to the prohibition under seal with the Court,” Jay Bratt, who is on Smith’s legal team, wrote in Friday’s filing.
Cannon’s decision was welcomed by several media organizations, including NBC News, The Associated Press, The New York Times, and CBS News, all of which argued that the former president’s case was of significant historical precedent that “cannot be overstated.” In addition, the witness list amounts to “a turning point from the secrecy of the Grand Jury investigation to the public administration of justice involving the highest level of power in American Government.”
“We are pleased that the Court recognized the First Amendment requires the government to meet a very high bar to seal any portion of these historic proceedings,” Chuck Tobin, an attorney for the press coalition, noted Monday in a statement.
