Legal experts are weighing in on Donald Trump’s chances for successfully blocking a federal judge’s Tuesday night ruling that requires the National Archives to release a trove of documents to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Trump had tried to appeal the judge’s ruling before she handed it down, but she quickly denied his request.
Immediately after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled against the former president, reminding his attorneys that the current president was “best positioned” to decide on matters of executive privilege as USA Today notes, Trump’s attorneys filed a “notice of appeal” to the D.C. Court of Appeals (remember this for later.)
As one legal expert suggested, it exposed their ignorance of court procedures:
“The case is likely to reach the Supreme Court,” USA Today reports.
But legal experts seem to hold a different opinion.
CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor says it could go either way.
“Trump already has appealed. That’s the easy part,” Honig writes. “The question now is whether the district judge or the court of appeals will issue a ‘stay’ – a pause, essentially, to allow the appeal to happen before docs go over. That’ll be a close call.”
On the question of whether or not the appeal will even be heard, MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst Joyce Vance, also a former federal prosecutor, says she expects to see “some type of ruling.”
Attorney Teri Kanefield, a Washington Post and NBC THINK contributor says Trump’s chances of succeeding are “slim.”
“I can’t see why the judge would offer a stay after denying the preliminary injunction,” Kanefield adds. “Nobody can predict 100% what a court will do. But this looks bad for Trump.”
Remember where Trump’s attorney filed his notice of appeal? In the D.C. Appeals Court?
If all this weren’t bad enough for the former president, attorney and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa suggests Trump’s attorney filed in the wrong court.