Link to tweet

?t=70IhJ4hOpoYKedFEJzdS-g&s=19

But yes. I agree. He weighed the alternatives.

From what I am reading, the disadvantage in DC could easily have shut down the trial. Aileen is awful, but her most likely effect will be delay.

Or she'll give him basically no sentence if he's convicted.

I fully expect her to delay things, but those other 2 issues are my main concern.

At Cannon being the judge. I'm sure Smith anticipated this and has a strategic plan.

as apparently, do you.

But it would be nice if we could all be respectful of each others' opinions as this unfolds. It doesn't need to devolve into fighting and name calling. We just disagree.

I don't say that specifically to you. I say it based on past observations. But to you I will say that yes, obviously some people do have an opinion that they came by honestly and that differs from ours.

That Cannon will sink this case. I think Smith will have covered all possibilities.

misunderstood it.

The Evidence will speak, and Cannon, obviously biased, will be muted, unable to use her bias.

Faith in the rule of law is working out as expected so far…majestically. Couple of bumps in the road, par for the legal 18 holes!

she will wreck the case.

I fully anticipate wishing she'd step in front of a bus before this is over, but I don't think she's a match for Jack.

political or legal. Not yet.

The Court is where Lies come to Die and be buried deep. Fascists hate Courts.

Chief Inspector Jack Smith is armed with the Law and the Evidence and a fearsome team of incorruptible players…unlimited funds…Cannon doesn’t stand a chance, armed only with loyalty.

Put a picture of the Chief and the Cannon side by side along with their resumes…it’s a contrast in competency.

It makes it harder for the Maga nuts to scream about it, since she was appointed by tfg

And I think in the end, she will have no effect at all on how this turns out.

She can go off half-cocked and ruin her career, but I think she is unlikely to do so, since she didn't quit after her stupid special master ruling got completely reversed on appeal.

that's all I'm sayin.

The assignment was not in Smith's hands.
The assignment is not permanent.
The assignment might change without Smith lifting a finger.
The time has not arrived when Smith would even be ABLE to move to remove her.

Smith has no power to assign a judge or to remove Cannon. The most he can do is request.

The jurisdiction is because the crime occurred at Merde-a-loco, in Florida. Smith had no choice but to file this case there.

But it is easy to run around shouting "Somebody should have done something."

They could have held her accountable.

I've been reading all these threads about Cannon and I'm perplexed as to why folks are so upset. Indictments are made where crimes were committed. I read the indictment. It's clear that serious crimes were committed in Mar a Lago.

Ok, there's a biased judge in that district. Guess what, there are biased judges everywhere, especially since the big orange baby got four years to appoint them. Prosecutors deal with that.

This particular judge already tried something and got in trouble for it. Legal analysts are saying that the 11th Circuit Court (who intervened last time) will probably force her to recuse herself again. They're watching her like a hawk.

However, it's not even clear that she'll be assigned this case permanently. The justice system is slooooooow.

Worst, worst case: she gets the case, doesn't recuse, and oversees an eventual trial. Personally, I think a trial is years away because Trump's lawyers will delay and delay. But if it comes to trial, everything will happen in a glare of publicity.

I'm not worried about Cannon. I think more - and worse - indictments are coming. I don't know what will happen but Cannon's not the biggest thing right now.

She is more "uniquely biased" than most.

Motions for recusal are difficult in federal court, but at a minimum there has to be a motion. Jeez.

There is no basis for removing her. The 11th circuit tore her special master decision to pieces on the merits, but appeals courts tear district court judges to pieces for their decisions all the time. The 11th Circuit did not suggest in any way that her decision was the result of bias and, in fact, rejected an ethics complaint against Cannon finding no evidence of bias or other illicit conduct. Moreover, while there is precedent for the 11th Circuit directing that a case be reassigned to a different judge when the original judge repeatedly fails to follow the 11th Circuit's orders, in the special master case, the 11th circuit remanded the case to Cannon, not to a different judge and, significantly, on remand Cannon amended her order consistent with the 11th Circuit's decision.

The Evidence is overwhelming, overwhelming will defeat bias.

Trump people put their finger on the scale to get Aileen Cannon appointed for the search warrant investigation. Trump people wanted her to preside over the investigation. Trump's strategy from day 1 of being investigated was to delay everything. Aileen Cannon did exactly what Trump wanted her to do, she delayed the document investigation by interfering in a valid FBI search warrant, by interfering in an ongoing DOJ criminal investigation by delaying it.

Now Trump is indicted and the Chief clerk assigns the case to Cannon based on her being chosen improperly the first time, she was already involved in the case. Yes, of course Jack Smith can run rings around Aileen Cannon and no Jack Smith would not want Cannon recused just because she is a Trump appointed judge. I believe that Jack Smith wants to hold a Trump trial before the election, and I am quite sure that Jack Smith is aware that based on Cannon's past performance of delay, the possibility of that happening is greatly diminished with Cannon.

If Cannon is permanently assigned to this trial Jack Smith should file to have her recuse herself and Jack Smith should file with the 11th Circuit Appeals court to have her recused.

Lets see what happens at the arraignment hearing. Lets see if we get an indication of when a Trump trial will be scheduled. I guarantee, with Cannon presiding, it will not happen before the election. Personally I believe the American people deserve to see who Donald Trump is before voting for him, but that's just my humble opinion. Jack Smith said he expects a trial to last 3 weeks, he said that for a reason, he wants a trial before the election.

But that might be why he made the indictment so detailed and damning. The facts are already all out there.

But we know the attention span of the American people, so I take your point.

Despite what you apparently think, it was not guaranteed that Cannon would be assigned that case. Proof? Trump's RICO lawsuit against Hillary Clinton was filed in Fort Pierce, where Cannon is assigned. But the case was assigned to Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who is assigned to the West Palm division.

What has become apparent in recent days is that many people (and I include myself among them), don't actually know the ins and outs of how judges are assigned to cases in the Southern District of Florida. And that includes various "experts" who have offered all sorts of opinions, sometimes contradictory, about Cannon's appointment, whether it is "permanent", whether there are grounds for the 11th Circuit to disqualify her, etc etc.

Its become clear to me that the internal court rules and procedures for assigning judges are more complicated than simply assigning the case to a judge in the division where the case is filed. For example, the paperwork submitted by DOJ along with the indictment check the box for the West Palm Division (which makes sense since Mar-a-Lago, the locus of the acts described in the indictment, is in Palm Beach County ) and also checked to box asserting that this is not a "related" case to any other case. But that didn't prevent the case from being assigned to Cannon.

The system undoubtedly requires various factors to be taken into account. For example, it is likely that in deciding the "pool" of judges from which the assignment will be made, consideration must be given to the current workload of the judges, since it would make no sense to assign a case to a judge that already has a full plate of cases.

I wish Cannon hadn't been assigned to the case and maybe it will turn out that Smith can and will argue that the case should be heard in West Palm by a judge assigned to that Division. But since we know that a West Palm judge can be assigned to a Fort Pierce case, there is reason to think that a Fort Pierce judge can be assigned to a West Palm, or maybe even Miami, case.

But apart from some rule that would dictate who can and can't be assigned this case, there are not grounds for disqualifying her based on her handling of the Special Master case and I can't imagine that Smith would file a motion with the 11th Circuit that he knows would be denied.

Slate is very worried. There is much that Cannon can do, but Smith has a lot of tools. It would not surprise me if Smith moves to reassign a judge. I thought there was no appeal if a case is "dismissed with prejudice", but Slate seems to think even that can be appealed. If Cannon makes a false move, she can be countered, but it might have to wait for the trial to finish, according to Slate.

And all of that is dependent on her being the judge. She is just in for the preliminaries, it seems, and the court itself could reassign her.

{emphasis added}


Click on this link for the scary article, but then remember that:

1) She might be automatically assigned out of the case after the preliminaries or the court administration might take it on themselves to reassign her. I don't know the machinations of that courthouse.

2) Smith could request reassignment and have a good case for reassignment.

3) She is constrained if she wants a career. She is now on record for an egregious set of decisions for the defendant in the other case, and would torpedo herself if she over-reaches again like that.

4) Smith could perhaps if needed relaunch the whole case in D.C. as a classified documents case and fight the whole "I declassified it in my mind" nonsense.

5) Smith has other cases. Nauta is under pressure and may turn to save his own skin because his indictment is apparently even more open-shut than tRump's. Bedminster is heating up and Ivanka's ashes feel a breeze though buried in a giant heavy coffin. And the big case about insurrection / overthrow of election is advancing in the background.

Appellate court ( at least thats what i heard)

... though she might desire one.

The alternative is to leave the judgeship, be given a plum right wing law firm job for a few years and then gradually founder and sink.

There's a reason she accepted or lobbied for a judgeship: she doesn't want a law firm career.

Thanks for the link. Interesting opinion column. I read it mostly as a warning to voters to choose wisely because presidents wield a lot of power in appointing judges, and look how much power judges have to subvert justice. (Not enough voters paid attention to this in 2016, and I've noticed that legal analysts aren't going to let people forget it.)

This paragraph notes that the (conservative, Trump-appointed) 11th already stopped Cannon once:

The madness finally ended when a panel of the 11th Circuit—made up of two Trump appointees and the ultraconservative William Pryor—ruled that Cannon had no authority to hear Trump’s lawsuit in the first place, rendering every one of her orders null and void. It was one of the most humiliating appellate smackdowns in recent history, a total demolition of literally every action that Cannon had taken from the outset of the case. The 11th Circuit accused Cannon of attempting “a radical reordering of our caselaw” that violated “bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.” And it directed her to relinquish control over the case.

you know he only appoints ppl he thinks he can control. usually means he has dirt on them.
blackmail and bribery go hand in hand w these monsters. it’s his lifelong pattern.

if he has something juicy on her…

Will Cannon get to set the date of the Trump trial at the arraignment? I haven't seen an answer.

All that Cannon has to do is say that based on her schedule, a Trump trial will begin 1 year from now.

If everyone here is OK with that then fine, we damn well better GOTFV once again and hope we have a fair election.

The question you posted reads to me like we should be suspicious of Jack Smith's intentions of purposely losing his case.

Maybe you're not aware of the fact that it was imperative to proceed in Florida to prevent a higher court dismissal based on the wrong venue.

Matters applying to events that took place in that state, needed to be adjudicated in that state.

I was as impressed with Smith's directness and committment to rule of law as most of DU was.

What I'm objecting to are the folk who are crying doom and gloom, insisting that Cannon will sink or dismiss the case or otherwise be instrumental in letting Trump walk.

I'm sure Smith has this all covered. Don't know how - but he seems like the right person to put an end to Trumps lawbreaking.

Sometimes text doesn't convey actual intent.

Give her enough rope…see is she hangs herself.

If she's removed from the case she will become a right wing media celebrity as a martyr, with quite likely a higher paycheck.

The alternative is that if she flies straight, keeps to the law, she has a comfortable position for life.

If she wanted to compete, she would not have accepted a judgeship.

...again, to rule in his favor. Bribery is something they are used to doing. Hope someone is wired or the DOJ has other surveillance to catch her taking a dive for TFG. Would not be surprised.

Could be a trap for her and that arm of the cabal.

Since yesterday.

I think the SC has a long game that is not easily discerned. With my apprentice level legal knowledge I am seeing some possibilities that may be underlying strategy that extends beyond some speculations made in prior comments here.

It might be that SC has a way to deal with a number of crimes in each case brought before the court. There is obviously a problem with the judge on the case as she has exhibited bias in blatantly unjust rulings. So this may be one way to get her to slit her own throat in a hurry and create a side case for her impeachment or possible arrest in a RICO case*. That's one possibility.

Or, maybe he is expecting her to blow it right off the bat and will have the 11th Circuit replace her or he could move the case to DC which would not be as advantageous.

Or the 11th Circuit could issue warnings to her to not fuck this up or there will be sanctions for her.

And then...

Even if she tanks this case there will be such an uproar that she will be hounded into oblivion if she isn't removed from the bench entirely. Not that this could be a good thing but it could be used to SC's advantage in the upcoming J6 indictments because that is going to be a "wake up Jethro" event. That case will very likely include a number of people in office at all levels and will have tributary cases for those not widely known but participants all the same.

How? It is possible that the biased in the judiciary could be outed in that case, I can only imagine how far it could go but I suspect that there will be some surprises as to how far it actually will go. I expect the federalist society to catch some legal hell at some point. This could promote a major restructuring of how we govern ourselves in a good way. But the boil must be lanced and drained first.

A few things that give me hope is that SC has a good working knowledge of what has been happening here from the outside for quite a while. Americans are often the last to know about some of our serious issues. He is well aware with whom and what he is dealing. And I think he will run intellectual circles around these criminals and help them expose themselves for what they are and what they intend for the rest of us.

I only lament two things though one may come about in the J6 case... that it will take time and that this isn't a capital crime. Maybe what comes out in the J6 trial is the charge of treason, that'll do it.

Just some thoughts. Mr. Smith plays the long game and he's probably an intellectual giant compared to these clowns and the paltry legal representation they can muster.

Just some thoughts that kind of formed a hypothesis of sorts.







*Should this be part of a RICO case, I could see it encompassing her overlords in the federalist society as conspirators and actuaries who shepherd these hacks into position and fund the efforts to subvert our legal system.

I have no doubt he is well aware of all the issues we are aware of, and more. He has had the wider perspective of seeing things from a distance and with an understanding of international law. This means he is well versed in the fundamental concepts and needs of a democracy that functions on the rule of law and not of people, though of course it is only as good as the people in the legal system and the voting populace.

Smith has convicted despots. He's knows 'em when he sees 'em, even in orange camouflage.

In Smith's abilities and I also think he is free from any pressures that may afflict others who are not as broadly experienced.

For greatly expanding on my (terse) post and thoughts. You nailed what I was trying to convey.

She may be reluctant to color too much outside then lines after being overruled in her previous attempt to pay her master. The problem is for justice in general as it should be when a judge is known to make up laws and use her position to perform political favors.

How many times must a judge's ruling be overturned before they are removed for incompetence?