Cannon accuses special counsel Jack Smith of lacking "professional courtesy," rejects gag order

Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee presiding over the former president’s classified documents case, has rejected special counsel Jack Smith’s request for a gag order. And while she stopped short of embracing the defense's motion that prosecutors should be held in contempt, she lectured prosecutors for failing to give the defense adequate time, in her view, to draft a response to their request for a gag.

Cannon took the prosecution to task over their filing at the end of last week that sought to stop Trump from putting law enforcement in “foreseeable danger” over their raid of his home in Mar-a-Lago. Smith pushed for the gag order after Trump’s false statements on Truth Social claiming that the feds were authorized to assassinate him. 

Technically, Cannon did neither side a favor on Tuesday since she denied both motions without prejudice. However, Smith certainly got the shorter end of the stick as she scolded his team, Law & Crime reported.

“[T]he Court finds the Special Counsel’s pro forma ‘conferral’ to be wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy,” Cannon wrote. “It should go without saying that meaningful conferral is not a perfunctory exercise.” 

In plainer English, Cannon chided prosecutors for rushing to file the gag order just before the Memorial Day weekend. In a filing Monday, defense lawyers had argued that doing so violated court rules and should be punished with sanctions.

In her ruling, Cannon said Smith's team had not provided the defense "sufficient" time to “permit reasonable evaluation of the requested relief by opposing counsel and to allow for adequate follow-up discussion as necessary about the specific factual and legal basis underlying the motion.”