Accepting such an argument would be “pure fiction,” the special counsel argued.
Special counsel Jack Smith, responding on Tuesday to the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, urged her to reverse course on entertaining the idea that Trump had any personal ownership over the classified materials he has been charged with unlawfully possessing.
In a late-night filing replying to an order last month from Judge Aileen Cannon requesting proposed jury instructions that appeared to accept at face value what legal experts have argued is one of Trump’s most fringe defenses – that the former president had unchecked ability to claim all classified records as his personal property – Smith argued that accepting such an argument would not only be “pure fiction,” but “meritless and fatally undermined” by all the evidence gathered by the government as part of their case.
Among that evidence, according to Smith, are interviews with Trump’s own Presidential Records Act representatives and “numerous” high-ranking officials from the White House, none of which “had heard Trump say that he was designating records as personal,”
How far can she go before someone calls her on these? And who should i be looking at to intervene? Usually corrupted judges have to at least appear unbiased.
The problem is she’s not issuing actual rulings. She keeps asking for arguments from lawyers, telegraphs she’s going to do something stupid, and then just let’s the motion hang undecided, for months. No rulings so nothing to appeal. The fear being she won’t make decisions until the trial is underway and they would essentially be not appealable at that time. Prosecutors/department of justice here are just demanding in legalese that she make some rulings so it would be appealable before the trial and they can have the appeals court shoot her down again like they always do, but ultimately they can’t really force her to do so. I think some of her insane questions and continuing to ask for arguments and not issuing rulings is just general incompetence, at least based on other cases she’s been involved in where she’s making constant very basic mistakes and her extreme inexperience (rated not competent during her nomination by American bar association). But of course all of this has the effect of delays, delays delays, even more than the Trump lawyers themselves were hoping to delay it. And by the time she finally makes some (dumb easily overturnable) decisions on these things, and Jack Smith appeals them, well there’s another delay waiting for the appeal, and then even more delay if they raise enough questions to have a new judge appointed. I think a lot of these dumb questions she’s asking and entertaining from lawyers is because she legitimately doesn’t understand the laws at play here and is having the lawyers explain it to her.
While she seems quite incompetent at her job, it certainly seems like she must be doing this deliberately at least to some degree too. It’s just getting harder and harder to see this actually getting done by the time of the election, thanks to this judge’s hard work to provide cover for Trump’s criminal activities. She also provided a lot of delays before the trial proceedings with the initial investigation and the whole stupid search warrant challenge case before the appeals court told her stop this bullshit with no basis in law and dismissed the whole case out of hand. I think any objective observer looking at this situation would come to the conclusion that Judge Cannon is only interested in helping Trump politically however possible and couldn’t give two shits about the law.
Maybe, lots of coaching from Putin’s Pals.
I think little of column A, little of column B, a mix of malice and incompetence.
Nothing apparently she will do this and our DOJ will do nothing. I truly believe all the cases against Trump are a show. No one wants to prosecute him because they fear his deranged base.
So they going play this out then wait until after November. If he wins then America is fucked. If he doesn’t then maybe then they will do something.
Until then it’s all a big show so might well not be surprised about anything you hear or see in these cases.
While I share your frustration, “doj will do nothing” makes no sense. You’re commenting on an article about the department of justice literally doing something, that’s what the article is about. They’re making more filings opposing her ridiculous questions. They made this one out of the blue, just demanding she make a decision on a bunch of pending questions she’s asked so they can appeal her probably dumb decisions. And the department of justice is the one bringing this criminal case in the first place, what do you mean “do nothing?”
The problem is she’s only telegraphed verbally and with the kinds of questions she’s asking for arguments on that she’s going to do something dumb to provide cover for Trump, but until she does the dumb thing and makes her decision there’s nothing for the department of justice to appeal. And even if they want to get her kicked off the case, which I suspect they do at this point even though that’s risky and delays things further, they need more evidence of her making dumb rulings to get that to happen. Until she actually makes the ruling and doesn’t just hint at doing something dumb, they’ve got nothing though. Point is, save your hatred for the Judge Cannon and the many other judges rated “not competent” by the American bar association that Trump and Republicans in the senate pushed through.