Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hold a hearing on Friday to determine whether Special Counsel Jack Smith has the legal right to prosecute former President Donald Trump after his legal team filed a motion that claims the Justice Department has no legal right to establish a special counsel whose sole focus is to prosecute Trump via Newsweek.
It has been noted that the former president is facing 40 federal charges over his handling of sensitive materials seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House in January 2021. He also faced accusations of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to retrieve them. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
A law professor, Seth Barrett Tillman, and a conservative advocacy group, the Landmark Legal Foundation, filed a motion on Monday seeking to file additional documents in the case.
It is also noted that Cannon has already allowed both to file “amicus,” or friends of the court, briefings in the case. Amicus briefings are expert opinions that a judge may accept into a case.
On its website, Landmark says it “advances an ‘originalist’ approach to the Constitution—that the words in the Constitution mean what they meant at the founding—and defends our nation’s bedrock principle of liberty.”
