assigned to oversee that case, interestingly, some of his personal belongings were damaged in that blast and on that basis the higher court said there s no way he could judge the case impartially. he believed he could ve wanted to stay on, it but the higher court intervened and forced his recusal. they removed him from the case with a writ of mandamus. again, very rare for this to happen. we re gonna have to see how hard the prosecution is going to fight for the recusal of judge cannon from this case if at all, and in the meantime she will be very much in control. as the trial judge he will have full destruction over how fast this goes or how slow. it s very much in don trump s favor. most observers agree, to make the trial go as slow as possible. of course if the trial gets pushed until after the 2024 election and trump were to be elected president in the 2024 election, he could just order his justice department to shut the whole case down.
legal experts are near unanimous now in their focus on the unusual judge who has an unusual history with these matters and who has, at least for now, been assigned to be the trial judge in this case. she has already been overturned and admonished by a very conservative federal appeals court for unusual interventions on behalf of trump in a matter related to this case several months ago. experts say the first major legal fight, and perhaps the only important legal fight in this case, perhaps the determinative legal fight in this case, is going to come up very quickly. that will be the fight over whether this particular judge remains the judge in control of this case. or will she be replaced? we re going to get to all of that tonight. we re going to begin tonight in miami, where we are joined by
government. that s called a brady order. it stands for united states supreme court case that requires the government to produce evidence that has a tendency to exculpate the defendant. put in simple terms, to be helpful to the defendant, to help him in his defense. that can be anything from evidence that would tend to reduce the sentence she evidence that would undermine the credibility of a witness. we haven t seen that order hit the dark it yet, so we don t know the timing for the production of that evidence. the rest of discovery will be addressed by a judge aileen cannon, or if she refuses herself, subtle motion or voluntary by another judge but for right now that s the only evidence it s being required to be produced. the other thing the magistrate judge did that i think is no is to impose a condition that nobody asked for. the department of basically said it would be fine with them if trump was not freed, was not
let me step back if i can. let s try to put this conversation in a bit of context. we are here tonight for two reasons. we are here because of donald trump s own actions. this case is because he refused to return these documents over 18 months. he took them, he lied about, them he allegation experience e to conceal his effort. we re also here because the rule of law requires the justice department to treat like case as. like doj has a long and extensive history of bringing charges against government officials and former government officials for the willful retention of information and insight if i could add one more thing if we have time, the one thing that really struck me about today s proceedings actually came from a reports within the courtroom. reports about the stare. did you see these reports? apparently jack smith stared and donald trump for virtually
well, biden had them. well, pence had them. and that is actually a simple, powerful message. so, i think you have all made an excellent case. and we ve got to televise this trial. you ve got to a least have audio so that we can hear in parts out. can i just say, beyond the misinformation, it sounds like a lot of legal grounds that trump can contest validly that could really undermine the case that the government is making. i mean, the crime fraud exception, which i think, you are right, nicolle, is an inflection point in getting this case charged. i did not know this until today. but when trump s lawyers fought that issue previously, in front of judge amy berman jackson, they were not privy to every part of the government s motion or the government s argument, or even the entire order from the judge. you can bet that they are going to take that fact and use it to contest the piercing of attorney-client privilege, and go in front of aileen cannon and re-argue that.