Judge Cannon Rules

Judge Cannon rules are not the rules lawyers are used to seeing applied in a courtroom. Hers is a court increasingly reminiscent of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” where important matters are upside down. The Queen of Hearts told Alice during the trial of the Knave of Hearts, “sentence first, verdict afterwards.” Judge Cannon ordered Jack Smith to provide her with jury instructions on the application of the Presidential Records Act (PRA) long before the case could even conceivably be ready to go to trial—jury instructions are typically filed shortly before trial begins. Judge Cannon hasn’t even ruled definitively on the role the Presidential Records Act will play in permitting Trump to mount a defense (which, of course, it shouldn’t do at all). Increasingly, the common theme seems to be that she finds disingenuous paths around rulings that would permit the Special Counsel to appeal her errors.