Don’t bother lowering the eyebrows
The Times says Aileen Cannon won’t be recused.
The news of Judge Cannon’s assignment raised eyebrows because of her role in an earlier lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump challenging the F.B.I.’s search of his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago. In issuing a series of rulings favorable to him, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, effectively disrupted the investigation until a conservative appeals court ruled she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene.
In other words she’s the last person who should be filling this slot.
There are all kinds of reasons other judges couldn’t be assigned to the case. It’s almost as if there are too many reasons. Assigning a judge who has already tried to protect Trump from the consequences of his crimes, and been caught doing it and replaced and made to look like a corrupt fool – a judge who was appointed by Trump, to the shock-horror of all observers on account of how underqualified she is – is not a very wise or judicious thing to do.
The clerk clarified another matter: whether Judge Cannon would continue to handle the case. Since news of Judge Cannon’s assignment emerged early Friday, observers have speculated that it could only be an initial assignment before being handed to another judge.
But Ms. Noble confirmed that no court practice would return the case to be assigned to another judge. In short, Judge Cannon’s assignment is permanent unless she were to step aside.
In short the fix is in already. He’s going to get away with it, isn’t he. Get away with it, get elected, get to destroy whatever shards and fragments are left.
Those “shards and fragments” are the US Judicial System. The opposite of ‘blind justice’ is ‘justice’ with eyes wide open and doing nothing about the injustice in full view. The argument of every person indicted in a court will be ‘why should I have to pay, after Trump got away with what he did.?’
I don’t believe it. There are mechanisms to recuse federal District Court judges. The standard is objective, i.e., would a reasonable person believe that the judge is biased. And the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals can review a judge’s improper refusal to recuse.
See 28 U.S.C. secs. 144, 455.
As someone who has thrown cold water on case after case that was supposed to be the one that would finally be Trump’s undoing, I must say here that he is very unlikely to get away with this. This is (finally) the real deal.
The Georgia election tampering case is also very promising.
The New York Stormy Daniels case is…not great. I wouldn’t pin any hopes on that.
But we have at last one case very likely to finally nail the orange dotard (the federal documents case) and other in the pipeline (the Georgia election tampering case). So this is a time for optimism.
If Screechy can spare the time and energy it would be good to get his take. For those who don’t subscribe to Serious Trouble (Ken White and Josh Barrow), they had a special edition of the podcast once they had seen the indictment. Key points from memory:
1) Very strong indictment with a lot of damning facts.
2) If found guilty Trump in serious trouble facing ‘years’ in prison.
3) Good reasons why case filed where it is, but downside is Judge Cannon.
4) KW says there are multiple ways in which Cannon can screw the case, including some with zero remedy.
5) KW still thinks Feds had to play it the way they have.
The bluntest and most outrageous way would apparently be to grant a motion to dismiss immediately following the prosecutions opening. According to Ken that would not be reviewable and double jeopardy attaches so no new trial on the same facts/charges. It would also be incredibly blatant and unsupported by the facts.
Ken has followed up with a brief essay on his own Substack outlining why he feels the Feds had to file in Florida and risk Cannon. While the Serious trouble podcast is behind a paywall, his sub stack is not.
I’m one of those who was pretty sceptical that the ‘system’ would ever hold Trump to account. I’m very pleased it is trying to. There will be consequences for Cannon if she does anything really outrageous, but if she’s of a mind to she might consider the repetitional damage worthwhile. After all, a future Republican President might be inclined to put her onto a Circuit Court and eventually SCOTUS if they felt inclined to. Depends what her tolerance for risk/reward is.
If Trump is found guilty in a trial presided over by “his judge”, wouldn’t that be an especially good outcome, politically speaking?
Well, yeah, and if Trump admitted he’s a determined serial criminal and a profoundly stupid greedy worthless sack of shit that would be a good outcome too, but it’s not going to happen.
Accountability tends to only apply to little people. The leadership of both parties is corrupt. Obama couldn’t go after bush Jr. because Democrats in the Senate were aware of bush Jr.’s torture program. Plus, Obama wanted to commit some war crimes and other crimes himself (bombing Libya in the face of Congress’s refusal to give him permission; his “kill lists” to assassinate US citizens abroad; etc.,)
Then there’s Clarence Thomas. Then whatsisface, Joe Manchin [sp?] The Clinton’s service to Wall Street. Pelosi’s insider trading. Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao’s mutual backscratching.
With Trump, they’re also afraid of his fanatical supporters responding violently to any punishments for their hero.
It’s the exact opposite of a government of laws, not men.
A presidential pardon can’t be ruled out either if Trump is convicted. It’s questionable whether Trump, if elected, could do such a thing, however it could be politically advantageous for Biden to do so, and he’s definitely a politician, so I wouldn’t put it past him. There are many ways for the greasy weasel to avoid responsibility. I’ll believe he’s been held accountable when I see it.
Oh I think we can pretty safely rule out Biden pardoning Trump.
Rob @4,
Thanks, though I’m not sure I have anything useful to add here. The usual rule is that you can’t base a motion to recuse on the fact that a judge has given you bad rulings on this or a related case. I highly doubt DOJ would get anywhere with arguing that a Trump appointee can’t preside over the case, for the reasons a Bill Clinton-appointed judge rejected Trump’s motion to disqualify. Maybe there’s something to be made out of an argument that “Judge Cannon was sharply criticized, including by the 11th Circuit, for her rulings on the prior case, and therefore has an incentive to ‘vindicate’ those rulings by denigrating the prosecution’s case.” I don’t know.
Normally the rule of thumb is that you want to be very, very careful about bringing motions to disqualify — if you accuse a judge of being biased, you really don’t want to be stuck with that judge. “If you come at the king, you’d best not miss” and all that. On the other hand, I can see an argument that airing out the case against Cannon might make her want to try to be fair. Honestly a lot of it probably comes down to what makes her tick personally — is she simply so deep in MAGA-world that she doesn’t care about being seen as a hack, or would she prefer to rehabilitate her reputation somewhat? If she has ambitions of being nominated to an appellate court someday, she’s pretty toxic to Democrats right now. Maybe that doesn’t matter, on the theory that Trump or some other GOP president nominates her anyway and the GOP has enough votes in the Senate to force it through.
That was a long-winded way of saying I have no idea!
OB@9, agreed that Biden isn’t going to pardon Trump. I can imagine a scenario where four years from now, a second-term Biden commutes the sentence of a convicted Trump, but even that seems like a stretch and certainly I’d oppose it.
I can’t even imagine that scenario, not when we know about that part where Trump shows war vulnerabilities to some random people who dropped by while telling them to shhhhhhh because they’re secret.
Well I suppose it’s a moot point because he has yet to be convicted and sentenced. Even then, will it be a fine that he will bilk his “Magadonians” in to covering the costs of? I am certainly not as optimistic as Skelly @3. The Georgia election tampering seems (to me) to be the most promising (and expedient) possibility, more so than the document mishandling, but again I’ll believe it when I see it. None of which is going to stop him from running.
Well I know he hasn’t been tried and convicted yet, let alone sentenced, but I want to talk about the prospects anyway.
Yes, I’m going to keep hoping justice will prevail somewhere along the line. Fingers crossed!