"Unusual and irresponsible": Expert says Judge Cannon seems to be "willfully aiding" Trump strategy

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% : "Here, however, Trump is a unique defendant in that he had lawful access to this information at the time he received it while president of the United States," McQuade said.
55% : The decision by Judge Cannon to permit this type of meeting is "irresponsible and clearly serves the interests" of Trump.
50% : Trump and his lawyers viewing these documents "needs to be made as secure as possible to prevent disclosure and dissemination," Gershman said.
42% : "Also, in a closed-door session with a judge who has already made many unduly favorable rulings for Trump, the defense may be able to influence the judge as to which documents they feel are prejudicial to their case, or even helpful to their case, which the judge likely may agree with," Gershman said.
39% : U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump, may experience heightened pressure as a result of the former president's presence in the courtroom, where she has to deliberate on whether prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith's office should be authorized to withhold or redact specific classified documents slated for disclosure during discovery, legal experts say.
36% : "Judge Cannon's agreeing to let Trump and his lawyers view these documents privately, with her but without prosecutors present, is highly unusual and irresponsible," Bennett Gershman, a former New York prosecutor and law professor at Pace University, told Salon.
30% : While Trump can attend the hearing, his co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, are not allowed to be there as they lack security clearance.
27% : After Cannon is done hearing arguments from Trump and his two co-defendants on their defense theories of the case, Smith will present arguments to the judge excluding the presence of the former president's legal team.
26% : The Trump legal team is likely to base some of Trump's trial defenses on the assertion that the classified documents he was accused of retaining no longer qualified as "national defense information," as defined in the Espionage Act, when he was found with them in 2022, sources told The Guardian.
15% : The prosecutors won't be in the same facility at the time Trump and his lawyers view the materials so if Trump "inadvertently" says something "incriminating," nobody will know about it except his lawyers and the judge.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.