Says it all
She’s been careful to avoid making rulings because bad rulings can get her kicked off the case. Wherever possible, she reschedules, indefinitely postpones, or otherwise delays the trial because judges have a TON of say in how they schedule things.
She made a couple bad rulings early on and got reversed and admonished by a panel of judges. That’s two strikes.
She made another bad ruling about allowing redacted information in the defense’s filings to be seen by the public. Smith started the process of going to the other judges again, but she reversed her own bad ruling that time before it escalated to the other judges.
Now in this request she’s made another bad ruling. This may well be strike 3. Smith will certainly appeal to have the changes implemented. Whether he also brings up the other two incidents and asks for her to be removed is yet to be seen.
The thing is, you only get 1 chance to have the judge removed. And if it doesn’t work, you’re stuck with an even more hostile judge for the rest of the trial. Smith has to balance the need to have the trial before the election (already too late) against having enough justification for the extreme action of having a federal judge removed from a case against their will.
