CNN analyst Katelyn Polantz expressed astonishment that Judge Aileen Cannon wanted to hear arguments from unrelated parties on whether Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump should be dismissed.

Judge Cannon — a Trump appointee — held a hearing Friday on Smith’s appointment, the gag order request, and other issues.

On Friday’s edition of CNN Newsroom, Polantz told anchor Wolf Blitzer that Cannon is taking the “unusual” step of hearing arguments from “people that have nothing to do with this case”:

WOLF BLITZER: Trump’s legal team is back in federal court and taking direct aim at the prosecutor in a classified documents case. The former president is arguing that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed as the special counsel.

Smith has brought charges against Trump in both Florida as well as right here in Washington, D .C. Joining us now is senior crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz. Katelyn, walk us through what is happening in court today.

KATELYN POLANTZ:

Donald Trump isn’t there in person, but we’re more than an hour into this hearing and it’s Judge Cannon listening to legal arguments about a topic she wanted to hear quite a lot about, the authority and the validity of the special counsel’s office, their ability under the Constitution to bring a charge against someone like Donald Trump, or anyone, really.

This is an issue that other judges have heard arguments on or even just looked at because defense teams like Trump’s have brought it before them and they dismissed these sorts of things very quickly and said, “Now this isn’t a valid legal argument, special counsel’s offices can bring cases in the Justice Department, in the federal system and take them on to trial.”

But Judge Cannon wants to hear hours of arguments on this, not just from the special counsel’s office and Donald Trump’s team and his co -defendants teams, but also from law professors, people that have nothing to do with this case, but told her that they have opinions that they want to share about it.

That is so unusual, in any case, Wolf, especially at the trial level, especially in a criminal case, but there’s Judge Cannon hearing this in the first of three days of arguments on things she’s going to have to figure out before trial.

But how long that may be and when that trial may happen, a lot of question marks there.

Watch above via CNN Newsroom.

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