Democrats began concocting a new recusal scandal on Friday, following Special Counsel Jack Smith’s filing of a motion in the federal documents case now pending against Donald Trump in Florida. That motion requested that the presiding judge, Trump-appointee Aileen Cannon, prohibit the former president from making “public statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”
Soon after Smith filed the motion, leftist lawyers responded as if the special counsel’s request were some five-dimensional chess move that will finally lead to Cannon being pulled from the case. Roger Parloff, a senior editor at Lawfare, first hinted at the theory on Friday evening, suggesting Smith had “crafted” the motion “to highlight Judge Cannon’s bias & hypocrisy if she fails to take action.”
Andrew I-Accidently-Wiped-My-iPhone Weissmann expanded on Parloff’s ponderings, posting late Friday on X: “Smart move by Smith as Judge Cannon won’t be likely to grant the gag order, will show her patent bias, and Smith can then appeal to the 11th Circuit.”
Soon law professor Laurence Tribe amplified Weissmann’s brainstorm, reposting it and commenting, “Smith has finally teed up a motion whose likely denial by Judge Cannon should lead CA11 to take her off the stolen documents case against Trump…”
Former U.S. Attorney-turned-law professor and NBC/MSNBC legal analyst Barb McQuade repeated the trope, posting, “Jack Smith is seeking a court order to prevent Trump from making more false and dangerous accusations against the FBI in
