CNN’s Elie Honig Says Clarence Thomas ‘Definitely’ Gave Judge Cannon a ‘Roadmap’ to Throw Out Classified Docs Case

Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump on Monday, agreeing with the Trump legal team’s claim that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said in his analysis that Cannon’s decision may have been directly inspired by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas .

CNN anchor Jim Acosta tried to connect the dots between Thomas and Cannon’s decision, which cited Thomas numerous times from the recent SCOTUS ruling that presidents had criminal immunity for “official acts.” Honig agreed that Thomas had basically provided Cannon a “roadmap” to rule that the appointment of Smith was unconstitutional:

Acosta: [I]f this case has been going on for months and months, why did Judge Cannon all of the sudden do this now? Is it basically that Justice Thomas put this bug in her ear and she said, “Okay, that sounds good. Let’s pull the rip cord here”?

Honig: Well, Justice Thomas definitely gave her a roadmap, and it seems she has largely followed that roadmap in issuing this opinion. As for the timing, the briefing has happened over the last couple of weeks and months, and the argument just happened a few weeks ago. So this would be the time when that decision would be made. I mean, the judge did not go and make this opinion what we call sua sponte , meaning from the bench on her own. This was the result of briefing by both parties. But Jim, it’s important to note that the same or similar arguments have been made against, really, special counsel throughout the past several years. The same arguments were made to try to disqualify David Weiss , the special counsel in the Hunter Biden case. The court rejected that. The same arguments were made to try to disqualify Robert Mueller , the special counsel, of course, who investigated Russian interference in the election. They were rejected there.

One difference here, though, that’s important to note is that Jack Smith has never been confirmed by the Senate, whereas at least Robert Mueller and David Weiss had, at various prior points in their career, had been vetted and confirmed by the Senate. So there’s a slight distinction here. But look, we do have a different outcome here with this judge than we’ve seen with other federal judges. And that tees this up for appeal.

Watch the video above via CNN.