A University of St. Thomas law professor says it remains to be seen if the judge assigned to former President Donald Trump’s criminal case for allegedly mishandling classified documents will be fair and impartial.
Professor Mark Osler joined News Talk 830 WCCO’s Adam Carter and Jordana Green to discuss the upcoming case.
Osler says Trump is alleging he is being treated differently from President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence, who also retained documents from their time in office.
However, Osler says he can’t see the merit in this argument because the situations surrounding each scenario were so different from Trump's.
“Once the documents became known, did people give them up willingly? Pence did. Certainly, Joe Biden has. But Trump didn’t,” Osler said. “He moved them around Mar-a-Lago. He made false statements, allegedly, about whether they turned everything over. That’s going to impact that prosecutorial decision.”
Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by then-President Trump, has been widely criticized for her past rulings in his favor, something that could repeat itself here.
“There’s two important wild cards in play here. One is the judge. If it is Judge Cannon, then that’s someone who has deep sympathy to Donald Trump and could skew the case in his favor,” Osler said. “The other’s the jury. Juries make decisions for reasons that are proper under the law and sometimes some that aren’t, including sympathy to the defendant.”
Now, if the decision on how to proceed does hit Cannon’s desk, Osler says that many across the political spectrum have called on her to recuse herself.
Trump arrived at the courthouse in Miami on Tuesday afternoon just after 2 p.m. EST. He entered a not guilty plea to all 37 felony counts brought against him.
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