#Attorney for Criminal Appeals in Florida

[simply-ivanka]

Trump and the Lawfare Implosion of 2024

Will his prosecution end up putting him back in the White House?

Wall Street Journal

By Kimberley A. Strassel

What’s that old saying about the “best-laid plans”? Democrats banked that a massive lawfare campaign against Donald Trump would strengthen their hold on the White House. As that legal assault founders, they’re left holding the bag known as Joe Biden.

In Florida on Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed indefinitely the start of special counsel Jack Smith’s classified-documents trial. The judge noted the original date, May 20, is impossible given the messy stack of pretrial motions on her desk. The prosecution is fuming, while the press insinuates—or baldly asserts—that the judge is biased for Mr. Trump, incompetent or both. But it is Mr. Smith and his press gaggle who are living in legal unreality, attempting to rush the process to accommodate a political timeline.

What did they expect? Mr. Smith waited until 2023 to file legally novel charges involving classified documents, a former president, and a complex set of statutes governing presidential records. The pretrial disputes—some sealed for national-security reasons—involve weighty questions about rules governing the admission of classified documents in criminal trials, discovery, scope and even whether Mr. Smith’s appointment as special counsel was lawful. Judge Cannon notes the court has a “duty to fully and fairly consider” all of these, which she believes will take until at least July. This could push any trial beyond the election.

Mr. Smith’s indictments in the District of Columbia, alleging that Mr. Trump plotted to overturn the 2020 election, have separately gone to the Supreme Court, where the justices are determining whether and when a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts while in office. A decision on the legal question is expected in June, whereupon the case will likely return to the lower courts to apply it to the facts. That may also mean no trial before the election.

A Georgia appeals court this week decided it would review whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue leading her racketeering case against Mr. Trump in light of the conflict presented by her romantic relationship with the former special prosecutor. The trial judge is unlikely to proceed while this major issue is pending, and the appeals process could take up to six months.

Which leaves the lawfare crowd’s last, best hope in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s muddled charges on that Trump 2016 “hush money” deal with adult-film star Stormy Daniels. That case was a mess well before Judge Juan Merchan allowed Ms. Daniels to provide the jury Kama-Sutra-worthy descriptions of her claimed sexual tryst with Mr. Trump, during which she intimated several times that the encounter was nonconsensual.

Mr. Trump is charged with falsifying records, not sexual assault, and even the judge acknowledged the jury heard things that “would have been better left unsaid.” He tried to blame the defense for not objecting enough during her testimony, but it’s the judge’s job to keep witnesses on task. Judge Merchan refused a Trump request for a mistrial, but his openness to issuing a “limiting instruction” to the jury—essentially an order to unhear prejudicial testimony—is an acknowledgment that things went off the rails. If Mr. Trump is convicted, it’s also a strong Trump argument for reversal on appeal.

Little, in short, is going as planned. The lawfare strategy from the start: pile on Mr. Trump in a way that ensured Republicans would rally for his nomination, then use legal proceedings to crush his ability to campaign, drain his resources, and make him too toxic (or isolated in prison) to win a general election. He won the nomination, but the effort against him is flailing, courtesy of an echo chamber of anti-Trump prosecutors and journalists who continue to indulge the fantasy that every court, judge, jury and timeline exists to dance to their partisan fervor.

These own goals are striking. Mr. Smith wouldn’t be facing delays if he’d acknowledged up front the important constitutional question of presidential immunity, or if he’d sought an indictment for obstruction of justice and forgone charging Mr. Trump with improperly handling classified documents, which gets into legally complicated territory. The federal charges might carry more weight with the public had Mr. Bragg refrained from bringing a flimsy case that makes the whole effort look wildly partisan. And Ms. Willis’s romantic escapades have turned her legal overreach into a reality-TV joke.

Democrats faced a critical choice last year: Try to win an election by confronting the real problem of a weak and old president presiding over unpopular far-left policies, or try to rig an outcome by embracing a lawfare stratagem. They chose the latter. Perhaps a court will still convict Mr. Trump of something, although that could play either way with the electorate. Lawfare as politics is a very risky business.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― For Donald Trump, Tuesday’s election has come to this: It’s either the White House or the Big House. If he wins, the coup-attempting former president, already a convicted criminal, will be able to postpone his Georgia and New York state prosecutions until he is no longer in office. As for his two federal cases, he would be able to make them disappear forever by simply ordering his attorney general to dismiss them. “Those will be dismissed on Jan. 20. Both of them,” said Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer and onetime federal prosecutor who thinks his old boss deserves prison time. “There’s a compelling interest for the country to deter this treasonous bullshit and the mishandling of sensitive information.��� Trump himself confirmed he would end the federal prosecutions by firing special counsel Jack Smith in an interview last month with pro-Trump radio host Hugh Hewitt. “It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said. Smith has headed the election interference and classified documents investigations.

The New York and Georgia cases, meanwhile, would at best go into hibernation, lawyers said, because courts have ruled that presidents must have the ability to carry out their duties under the Constitution, notwithstanding state legal cases. “The state cases, because of the supremacy clause, nothing much will occur,” said Karen Agnifilio, a former prosecutor in Manhattan. “He can be sentenced in New York state, but he will not get anything that bleeds into his presidency. So maybe community service? A fine? Nothing?” A Trump victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris would mark the first time in American history that voters have put a literal criminal into office. Among former presidents, only Richard Nixon even came close to facing charges for his attempt to cheat in the 1972 presidential election and his subsequent attempts to cover it up. He was preemptively pardoned by newly sworn-in Gerald Ford days after Nixon resigned from office in 1974.

Trump, in contrast, already faces three active criminal cases against him: in state court in Georgia, for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss there; in federal court in Washington, D.C., for his actions leading up to and during his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt; and in New York state court, for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star days ahead of the 2016 election. There was a second federal prosecution, in South Florida based on Trump’s refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him to his Palm Beach country club upon leaving the White House, that was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Smith is appealing to have those charges reinstated. The New York case would be his most immediate threat, should he lose. A New York City jury in May found him guilty on every count. Sentencing is now set for Nov. 26. Though it is a white-collar crime and Trump is still legally a first-time offender, Judge Juan Merchan can consider Trump’s lack of remorse, the seriousness of the crime ― intended to sway the 2016 presidential election ― as well as Trump’s multiple violations of Merchan’s gag order forbidding the former president from attacking witnesses and court officers in the case.

Today, this election will determine the fate of any chance of whether Donald Trump will be held accountable for his crimes.

If he loses, he’ll be in a heap of legal trouble. If he wins, he’ll be off scot-free.

[beardedmrbean]

A U.S. judge in Florida on Monday dismissed the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of illegally holding onto classified documents after leaving office, handing the Republican former president another major legal victory as he seeks a return to the White House.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, ruled that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, was unlawfully appointed to his role and did not have the authority to bring the case.

It marked another blockbuster legal triumph for Trump, following a July 1 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that as a former president he has immunity from prosecution for many of his actions in office.

Cannon's ruling came two days after Trump was the target of an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania. Trump is set to be formally named the Republican presidential nominee in Milwaukee this week challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election.

Prosecutors are likely to appeal the ruling. Courts in other cases have repeatedly upheld the ability of the U.S. Justice Department to appoint special counsels to handle certain politically sensitive investigations.

A spokesperson for Smith did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At the very least, Cannon's ruling throws the future of the case into doubt. Smith is also prosecuting Trump in federal court in Washington on charges involving the former president's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but his lawyers have not made a similar challenge to the special counsel in that case.

In the documents case, Trump was indicted on charges that he willfully retained sensitive national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office in 2021 and obstructed government efforts to retrieve the material.

Two others, Trump personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Olivera, were also charged with obstructing the investigation.

Trump's lawyers challenged the legal authority for Attorney General Merrick Garland's 2022 decision to appoint Smith to lead investigations into Trump. They argued that the appointment violated the U.S. Constitution because Smith's office was not created by Congress and the special counsel was not confirmed by the Senate.

Lawyers in Smith's office disputed Trump's claims, arguing that there was a well-settled practice of using special counsels to manage politically sensitive investigations.

"This ruling flies in the face of about 20 years of institutional precedent, conflicts with rulings issued in both the Mueller investigation and in D.C. with respect to Jack Smith himself," said Bradley Moss, an attorney who specializes in national security.

Moss also said the ruling raises the question of whether Smith will seek to have Cannon removed from the case.

Cannon's ruling is the latest and most consequential in a series of decisions she has made favoring Trump and expressing skepticism about the conduct of prosecutors. The judge previously delayed a trial indefinitely while considering a flurry of Trump’s legal challenges.

In an unusual move, she allowed three outside lawyers, including two who sided with Trump, to argue during a court hearing focused on Trump's challenge to Smith's appointment.

Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also provided a boost to Trump's challenge to the special counsel. In an opinion agreeing with the court's decision to grant Trump broad immunity in the election-related case, Thomas questioned whether Smith's appointment was lawful using similar arguments to those made by Trump's lawyers.

Garland appointed Smith, a public corruption and international war crimes prosecutor, to give investigations into Trump a degree of independence from the Justice Department under Biden's administration.

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The University of Florida (UF) has handed down severe and potentially life-altering punishments to seven pro-Hamas rioters who participated in occupying the campus in an attempt to intimidate officials into boycotting and divesting from Israel, according to Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the university’s College of Journalism and Communications.

UF’s disciplinary body was set on slapping the students’ wrists, sentencing most to probation only based on recommendations from “hearing bodies,” until its new dean, Chris Summerlin, intervened and issued full suspensions for as many as four years. The harshest suspensions — including four years for Allan Hektor Frasheri, 21, and three years for other students — while not being formal expulsions, are long enough to make it unlikely that the students serving them will return to the University of Florida.

The seven students have reportedly submitted appeals to overturn their punishments that are pending.

Summerlin’s suspensions may not be the only consequences that the students will face.

According to Fresh Take Florida, the students were part of a group of nine that were arrested by local law enforcement for trespassing and resisting arrest, charges that are being prosecuted by the Alachua County State Attorney’s Office. They are taking their chances at trial, the news service added, noting that all nine have rejected “deferred prosecution,” an agreement that would require them to plead guilty, or no contest, in exchange for the state’s expunging the convictions from their records in the future so long as they abstain from committing more criminal acts.

One of the nine, computer science student Parker Stanely Hovis, 26, — who was suspended for three years — proclaimed on Tuesday that they will contest the state’s cases.

“We did not resist arrest, and we are prepared to fight our charges,” Hovis said in a statement. “We’re standing in solidarity with each other, and collectively demanding that the state drop the charges against us.”

The University of Texas at Austin has also meted out lengthy suspensions to pro-Hamas protesters who violated school rules, a course of action that experts believe is a deterrent against similar behavior in the future.

[mariacallous]

Criminal prosecutors may soon get to see over 900 documents pertaining to the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter after a judge rejected the conservative group Project Veritas’ First Amendment claim.

Attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said on behalf of the nonprofit Monday that attorneys are considering appealing last Thursday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan. In the written decision, the judge said the documents can be given to investigators by Jan. 5.

The documents were produced from raids that were authorized in November 2021. Electronic devices were also seized from the residences of three members of Project Veritas, including two mobile phones from the home of James O’Keefe, the group’s since-fired founder.

Project Veritas, founded in 2010, identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians.

In written arguments, lawyers for Project Veritas and O’Keefe said the government’s investigation “seems undertaken not to vindicate any real interests of justice, but rather to stifle the press from investigating the President’s family.”

“It is impossible to imagine the government investigating an abandoned diary (or perhaps the other belongings left behind with it), had the diary not been written by someone with the last name ‘Biden,’” they added.

The judge rejected the First Amendment arguments, saying in the ruling that they were “inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent.” She also noted that Project Veritas could not claim it was protecting the identity of a confidential source from public disclosure after two individuals publicly pleaded guilty in the case.

She was referencing the August 2022 guilty pleas of Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property. Both await sentencing.

The pleas came two years after Harris and Kurlander — two Florida residents who are not employed by Project Veritas — discovered that Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, had stored items including a diary at a friend’s Delray Beach, Florida, house.

They said they initially hoped to sell some of the stolen property to then-President Donald Trump’s campaign, but a representative turned them down and told them to take the material to the FBI, prosecutors say.

Eventually, Project Veritas paid the pair $20,000 apiece to deliver the diary containing “highly personal entries,” a digital storage card with private family photos, tax documents, clothes and luggage to New York, prosecutors said.

Project Veritas was not charged with any crime. The group has said its activities were newsgathering and were ethical and legal.

Two weeks ago, Hannah Giles, chief executive of Project Veritas, quit her job, saying in a social media post she had “stepped into an unsalvageable mess — one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and post financial improprieties.” She said she’d reported what she found to “appropriate law enforcement agencies.”

Lichtman said in an email on behalf of Project Veritas and the people whose residences were raided: “As for the continued investigation, the government isn’t seeking any prison time for either defendant who claims to have stolen the Ashley Biden diary, which speaks volumes in our minds.”

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Jack Smith, the U.S. special counsel named to investigate Republican former President Donald Trump, has a reputation for winning tough cases against war criminals, mobsters and crooked police officers.

Behind the scenes, however, Smith's former colleagues say he is just as tenacious in his pursuit to get criminal charges dropped for the innocent as he is to win convictions against the guilty.

When Smith isn't busy competing as a triathlete in Ironman races, they said, he is working as a dogged investigator who is open-minded and not afraid to pursue the truth.

"If the case is prosecutable, he will do it," said Mark Lesko, an attorney at Greenberg Traurig LLP who worked with Smith when both were prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York City's Brooklyn. "He is fearless."

Smith recently returned to the United States after working from The Hague in the Netherlands since November while recovering from knee surgery following a biking accident, a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November to take over two investigations involving Trump, who is running for President in 2024.

The first probe involves Trump's handling of highly sensitive classified documents he retained at his Florida resort after leaving the White House in January 2021.

The second investigation is looking at efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election's results, including a plot to submit phony slates of electors to block Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's victory.

Grand juries in Washington have been hearing testimony in recent months for both investigations from many former top Trump administration officials.

SEARCH FOR INNOCENCE AND GUILT

Smith, a Harvard Law School grad who is not registered with any political party, started as a prosecutor in 1994 at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office under Robert Morgenthau, who was best known for prosecuting mob bosses.

Smith's friends credit Morgenthau with instilling in him the skills that made him the prosecutor he is today.

"There was just a real emphasis, from Morgenthau on down, on not just going after convictions," recalled Todd Harrison, an attorney at McDermott Will & Emery who worked with Smith in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and later in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn.

"We were praised if we investigated something and demonstrated that the target of the investigation was innocent."

Once, he and Smith "spent the whole night making phone calls" after learning that a jailed suspect in one of their cases was innocent. The suspect was released the next day.

In 1999, Smith started working at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn.

He won a conviction against New York City Police Officer Justin Volpe, a white policeman who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for assaulting Abner Louima, a jailed Black inmate, with a broomstick.

Smith also won a capital murder conviction against Ronell Wilson, a drug gang leader who murdered two undercover New York City police officers, though a federal appeals court vacated the death penalty verdict.

In 2008, Smith left to supervise war crime prosecutions at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He returned to the Justice Department in 2010 to head its Public Integrity Section until 2015.

Most recently, he worked as chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, and won a conviction last month against Salih Mustafa, a former Kosovo Liberation Army commander.

Moe Fodeman, an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who worked as a prosecutor with Smith, said his former colleague is known for being methodical and thinking outside the box.

"He is famous for to-do lists," said Fodeman, adding that the lists would be filled "with ideas that, of course, you should do, but no one thinks of."

Smith is also known for being expeditious, and Fodeman predicted the special counsel's investigations involving Trump will probably move swiftly.

"He's not going to be dillydallying," Fodeman said. "He's going to get the job done."

[follow-up-news]

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents trial in Florida dismissed the case against the former president Monday on the grounds that the appointment of and funding for special counsel Jack Smith were illegal. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, said in her 93-page decision that Smith's appointment was "unlawful" and unconditional." The clerk is directed to close this case," she wrote. She issued the decision on the first day of the Republican National Convention, two days after an assassination attempt against Trump. Trump praised the ruling in a statement that referred to Saturday's shooting and said other criminal cases against him should be tossed out, as well. A source who spoke directly with Trump said he was "surprised" but "very happy" with Cannon's decision. Smith's team indicated it would appeal Cannon's decision. “The dismissal of the case deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel," spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement. "The Justice Department has authorized the Special Counsel to appeal the court’s order.”

[the-quasar-literata]

August 18, 2023

By Laura Italiano, Camila DeChalus, C. Ryan Barber

It's hard to keep track of Donald Trump's very busy legal docket.

The former president is the subject of at least four major investigations into wrongdoing relating to his handling of White House documents, the election, the insurrection, and his finances — probes based in Florida, Fulton County, Georgia; Washington, D.C.; and New York.

Trump's business also remains under indictment in Manhattan for an alleged payroll tax-dodge scheme. On top of all that, Trump is fighting or bringing a grab-bag of important lawsuits.

Keep up to date on the latest of Trump's legal travails, both criminal and civil, with this guide to the ever-evolving Trump docket.

Indictments

The Trump Organization Payroll Case

The Parties: The Manhattan DA is prosecuting The Trump Organization.

The Issues: Trump's real estate and golf resort business is accused of giving its executives pricey perks and benefits that were never reported as income to taxing authorities.

The company's co-defendant, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, has pleaded guilty to the 15-year, payroll tax-dodge scheme.

As part of his Weisselberg agreed to serve 5 months in jail and pay back $2 million in back taxes and penalties.

What's next: Weisselberg also agreed to testify for the prosecution if lawyers for the Trump Organization fight the indictment at trial; an October 24 trial date has been set.

Weisselberg would describe to jurors a tax-dodge scheme in which company executives, himself included, received some pay in off-the-books compensation that included free apartments, cars, and tuition reimbursement. But Weisselberg is hardly the ideal prosecution witness. He still works for Trump Org as a special advisor, and Trump's side is hoping to turn his testimony to its advantage.

The Trump Organization could face steep fines if convicted of conspiring in the scheme by omitting the compensation from federal, state, and city tax documents and by failing to withhold and pay taxes on that compensation.

Criminal Investigations

The Fulton County election interference probe

The parties: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump, and his Republican associates

The issues: Willis is investigating whether Trump and his associates tried to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Her probe has expanded to also include investigating an alleged scheme to send a fake slate of electors to Georgia's state Capitol in an attempt to overturn the elections.

She's notified Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former personal attorney, that he's a target in the investigation. Giuliani testified for six hours under court order on August 17.

What's next: A federal appeals court temporarily halted on Sunday a court order for Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to testify before the Fulton County special grand jury on Tuesday, August 23.

The Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election

The parties: Federal investigators are increasingly scrutinizing the role Trump and his allies played in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

The issues: The Justice Department is facing pressure to prosecute following a string of congressional hearings that connected the former president to the violence of January 6, 2021, and to efforts to prevent the peaceful handoff of power.

In a series of eight hearings, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol described Trump's conduct in criminal terms and pointed to an April court decision in which a federal judge said the former president likely committed crimes in his effort to hold onto power. In that ruling, Judge David Carter called Trump's scheme a "coup in search of a legal theory."

Prosecutors have asked witnesses directly about Trump's involvement in the effort to reverse his loss in the 2020 election and are likely to issue more subpoenas and search warrants in the weeks ahead.

In June, federal investigators searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who advanced Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.

On the same day, federal agents seized the phone of John Eastman, a lawyer who helped advise Trump on how to overturn the 2020 election. A top prosecutor in the Justice Department's inquiry, Thomas Windom, revealed in late July that investigators had obtained a se cord warrant allowing a search of Eastman's phone.

Rep. Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the panel, lost her primary bid for reelection on August 16.

What's next: The Justice Department has remained largely silent about how and whether it would consider charges against Trump, but in July, prosecutors asked witnesses directly about the former president's involvement in the attempt to reverse his electoral defeat. FBI agents descended on Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, with a search warrant.Darren Samuelsohn

The Justice Department investigation into the handling of classified documents

The parties: The FBI searched Trump's estate in South Florida, Mar-a-Lago, on August 8 as part of an investigation into the possible mishandling of government records, including classified documents. Trump and his lawyers alleged prosecutorial misconduct and condemned the search as politically motivated.

The issues: Early in 2022, Trump turned over 15 boxes of documents — including some marked as classified and "top secret" — to the National Archives. But federal investigators scrutinizing the former president's handling of records reportedly grew suspicious that Trump or people close to him still retained some key records. The FBI seized about a dozen boxes of additional documents during the raid of Mar-a-Lago, in a search that immediately demonstrated how Trump's handling of records from his administration remains an area of legal jeopardy.

What's next: A federal judge in South Florida granted Trump's request for an outside arbiter — known as a special master — to review the more than 11,000 documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, including about 100 records marked as classified. Judge Aileen Cannon halted the review of those records as part of the Justice Department's criminal inquiry but said intelligence agencies could continue assessing the potential national security risk raised by Trump's hoarding of government records at his West Palm Beach estate. In response, the Justice Department said that bifurcation was unworkable and that Cannon's order had effectively paused the national security assessment.

The Justice Department asked Cannon to exclude the 100 classified documents from the special master review. If she declines to do so by September 15, the Justice Department signaled that it would go to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Civil Investigations

The NY AG's Trump Organization probe

The parties: New York Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating Trump, his family and the Trump Organization for three years.

The issues: James says she has uncovered a decade-long pattern of financial wrongdoing at Trump's multi-billion-dollar hotel and golf resort empire.

She alleges Trump misstated the value of his properties on annual financial statements and other official documents used to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans and tax breaks. Trump has called the probe a politically motivated witch hunt.

What's next: Court-ordered depositions of Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr., were delayed by the death of family matriarch Ivana Trump. But their depositions finally wrapped on August 10, when Donald Trump testified before investigators in James' Manhattan offices. He pleaded the Fifth more than 440 times.

The contentious, massive probe — involving more than 5 million pages of documents — appears close to filing a several-hundred-page lawsuit that could seek to put the Trump Organization out of business entirely.

Lawsuits against Trump

Lawsuits alleging 'incitement' on January 6

The Parties: House Democrats and two Capitol police officers accused Trump of inciting the violent mob on January 6.

The Issues: Trump's lawyers have argued that his time as president grants him immunity that shields him from civil liability in connection with his January 6 address at the Ellipse, where he urged supporters to "fight like hell."

A federal judge rejected Trump's bid to dismiss the civil lawsuits, ruling that his rhetoric on January 6 was "akin to telling an excited mob that corn-dealers starve the poor in front of the corn-dealer's home."

Judge Amit Mehta said Trump later displayed a tacit agreement with the mob minutes after rioters breached the Capitol when he sent a tweet admonishing then-Vice President Mike Pence for lacking the "courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country."

What's Next: Trump has appealed Mehta's ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and requested an oral argument. In a late July court filing, Trump's lawyers said the immunity afforded to the former president cannot be "undercut if the presidential act in question is unpopular among the judiciary."

Galicia v. Trump

The Parties: Lead plaintiff Efrain Galicia and four other protesters of Mexican heritage have sued Trump, his security personnel, and his 2016 campaign in New York.

The issues: They say Donald Trump sicced his security guards on their peaceful, legal protest outside Trump Tower in 2015.

The plaintiffs had been demonstrating with parody "Make America Racist Again" campaign signs to protest Trump's speech announcing his first campaign for president, during which he accused Mexican immigrants of being "rapists" and drug dealers.

Trump fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen said in a deposition that Trump directly ordered security to "get rid of" the protesters; Trump said in his own deposition that he didn't even know a protest was going on until the next day. His security guards have said in depositions that they were responding to aggression by the protesters.

What's next: Trial is set for jury selection on October 31 in NY Supreme Court in the Bronx.

E. Jean Carroll v. Trump

The Parties: Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll sued Trump for defamation in federal court in Manhattan in June 2019.

The Issues: Carroll's lawsuit alleges Trump defamed her after she publicly accused him of raping her in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-90s.

Trump responded to Carroll's allegation by saying it was untrue and that she was "not my type." Trump also denied ever meeting Carroll, despite a photo to the contrary.

What's next: Arrangements for the sharing of evidence are ongoing behind the scenes, including for the possible collection of Trump's DNA.

Carroll has said she wants to compare Trump's DNA with unidentified male DNA on a dress she wore during the alleged rape. The trial is tentatively set for Feb. 6, 2023; Carroll has said she would never settle the case.

The 'multi-level marketing' pyramid scheme case

The Parties: Lead plaintiff Catherine McKoy and three others sued Trump, his business, and his three eldest children, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, in 2018 in federal court in Manhattan.

The Issues: Donald Trump is accused of promoting a scam multi-level marketing scheme on "The Celebrity Apprentice." The lawsuit alleges Trump pocketed $8.8 million from the scheme — but that they lost thousands of dollars. Trump's side has complained that the lawsuit is a politically motivated attack.

What's Next: The parties say in court filings that they are working to meet an August 31 deadline for the completion of depositions.

Michael Cohen's 'imprisonment' case

The Parties: Trump fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen sued Donald Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and more than a dozen federal prison officials and employees, in federal court in Manhattan in 2021.

The Issues: The president's former personal attorney is seeking $20 million in damages relating to the time he spent in prison for financial crimes and lying to Congress about Trump's dealings in Congress.

Cohen says in his suit that he had been moved to home confinement for three months in the spring of 2020 due to the pandemic, but was then vindictively thrown into solitary confinement when he refused to stop speaking to the press and writing a tell-all book about his former boss. A judge ordered him released after 16 days.

What's Next: A decision is pending on defense motions to dismiss the case.

The Electric Avenue copyright case

The Parties: Eddy Grant, the composer/performer behind the 80s disco-reggae mega-hit "Electric Avenue," sued Donald Trump and his campaign in federal court in Manhattan in 2020.

The Issues: Grant is seeking $300,000 compensation for copyright infringement. His suit says that Trump made unauthorized use of the 1983 dance floor staple during the 2020 campaign. About 40 seconds of the song played in the background of a Biden-bashing animation that Trump posted to his Twitter account. The animation was viewed 13 million times before being taken down a month later.

Trump has countered that the animation was political satire and so exempt from copyright infringement claims. He's also said that the campaign merely reposted the animation and have no idea where it came from.

What's Next: There was an August 21 deposition completion deadline for both sides — including for Trump and Grant. Pretrial motions are not due to be filed until October.

Mary Trump v. Donald Trump

The Parties: The former president's niece sued him and his siblings in 2020 in the state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The Issues: Mary Trump alleges that she was cheated out of at least $10 million in a 2001 court settlement over the estate of her late father, Fred Trump, Sr.

Mary Trump alleges she only learned by helping with a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article that she'd been defrauded by her Uncle Donald, her aunt, Maryanne Trump Barry, and the late Robert Trump, whose estate is named as a defendant.

The Times' 18-month investigation "revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges," the Pulitzer Committee said in praising the piece. Lawyers for the Trumps have countered that it's far too late for Mary Trump to sue over a 2001 settlement that she had knowingly participated in.

What's next: The defendants' motion to dismiss, including on statute of limitations grounds, is still pending.

Lawsuits brought by Trump

Donald Trump v. Mary Trump

The Parties: The former president counter-sued his niece Mary Trump — and the New York Times — in 2021 in New York state Supreme Court in Dutchess County.

The Issues: Mary Trump, the Times and three of its reporters "maliciously conspired" against him, Trump alleges, by collaborating with the Times on its expose of and breaching the confidentiality of the family's 2001 settlement of the estate of Mary Trump's father, Fred Trump, Sr.

What's Next: Mary Trump's motion to dismiss is pending in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, where the case has since been transferred to.

Donald Trump v. Hillary Clinton

The Parties: Trump has sued Hillary Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and prominent Democrats including former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in a federal court in southern Florida in March, 2022.

The Issues: Trump alleged in this unusual use of federal racketeering statutes that Clinton and her campaign staff conspired to harm his 2016 run for president by promoting a "contrived Trump-Russia link."

The defendants succeeded in getting the massive lawsuit dismissed in September; a federal judge in Florida said the suit was structurally flawed and called it "a two-hundred-page political manifesto" in which Trump detailed "his grievances against those that have opposed him."

What's Next: Trump's side has promised to appeal the dismissal.

[sixstringphonic]

Prosecutors Appeal Dismissal of Trump Documents Case

The special counsel, Jack Smith, argued that Judge Aileen Cannon had erred in throwing out charges against Donald Trump of improperly holding national security secrets after leaving office. (Alan Feuer, NYT, 8/26/24)

Federal prosecutors began their bid to resurrect the moribund classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump on Monday, telling an appeals court in Atlanta that the trial judge had improperly thrown out the charges.

In a filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the prosecutors argued that the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, erred last month when she handed down a bombshell ruling that dismissed the case on the grounds that Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought it, had been appointed to his job illegally.

The ruling by Judge Cannon, who was placed on the bench by Mr. Trump, stunned many legal experts for the way that it upended 25 years of Justice Department practice and flew in the face of previous court decisions about the appointments of special prosecutors reaching back to the Watergate era.

Issued on the first day of the Republican National Convention, where Mr. Trump formally accepted his party’s presidential nomination, Judge Cannon’s ruling also gave him a major legal victory at an auspicious political moment.

Mr. Smith’s appellate brief on Monday was merely the start of a legal battle that may end up at the Supreme Court and is likely to drag on until well after the election in November.

Should Mr. Trump win the election, he would have the power to fire Mr. Smith and could order the Justice Department to drop the appeal. Should he lose, the appeals process will determine whether he can still go to trial on the charges.

In their filing, Mr. Smith’s deputies told a three-judge panel of the appeals court that Judge Cannon had committed an error when she ruled that no specific federal statute authorized the appointment of special counsels like Mr. Smith or gave them the “prosecutorial power” that they have wielded for 25 years. The prosecutors pointed to four current statutes that they believe give the attorney general the authority to name special counsels.

“The district court’s contrary view conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court, that the attorney general has such authority,” the prosecutors wrote, “and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.”

The classified documents case, which was being heard in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., before Judge Cannon threw it out, had once seemed to be the most straightforward of the four criminal prosecutions Mr. Trump has faced in the past two years.

He was charged in June of last year with illegally holding on to a trove of classified national security materials after leaving office and then obstructing government efforts to retrieve them along with two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who worked for him at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.

Since 1999, the appointment of special counsels has been governed by internal Justice Department regulations traditionally believed to have been based on at least four federal laws laying out the structure of the department and the powers of the attorney general.

That practice was adopted after Congress permitted the Independent Counsel Act, a law that specifically authorized and governed a different type of independent prosecutor, to lapse after the Whitewater investigation into President Bill Clinton.

But Judge Cannon rejected that tradition, ruling that none of the statutes governing the conduct of attorneys general actually gave them the authority to appoint special prosecutors like Mr. Smith. She also found that Mr. Smith’s appointment was illegal because he had not been named by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Prosecutors with some measure of independence from the federal officials who appoint them have long been used to conduct sensitive political investigations. The practice reaches back to the days when the Confederate leader, Jefferson Davis, was charged with seditious conspiracy after the Civil War, Mr. Smith’s deputies reminded the appeals court.

The prosecutors claimed that Judge Cannon had “erroneously disregarded this history as ‘spotty’ or ‘ad hoc’” and paid too much attention to the minor iterations in the rules that have governed independent prosecutors over the decades.

Mr. Smith’s team also expressed concern that Judge Cannon’s refusal to recognize the validity of the way in which he got his job could “call into question hundreds of appointments throughout the executive branch.” And that, they wrote, “could jeopardize the longstanding operation of the Justice Department.”

Judge Cannon based her decision to toss out the documents case on the appointments clause of the Constitution. The clause requires presidential nomination and Senate confirmation for all principal officers of the government, but allows so-called “inferior officers” to be put in place by leaders of federal departments, including the attorney general, under the guidance of specific laws.

Mr. Smith’s deputies told the appeals court that Judge Cannon had made a mistake when she found that there were no laws that specifically authorized Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to name Mr. Smith to the post of special counsel in November 2022. Mr. Smith was given the job of investigating allegations that Mr. Trump had illegally held on to classified documents after leaving office and separate accusations that he had plotted to overturn the 2020 election.

In seeking to persuade the appeals court, Mr. Smith’s team pointed primarily to a Supreme Court case, United States v. Nixon, which found that the attorney general had the statutory power to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.

In her dismissal order, Judge Cannon took the position that the Supreme Court’s finding about the Watergate special counsel was a “nonbinding” aspect of the ruling, which largely focused on the separate issue of whether President Richard M. Nixon had to comply with a subpoena in the broader inquiry.

While the appellate brief by Mr. Smith’s team was chiefly designed to bring back the criminal charges against Mr. Trump, it also looked beyond the classified documents case to the long-term health of the Justice Department. Prosecutors worried that there could be devastating consequences to the department if Judge Cannon’s findings were left unchallenged.

“If the attorney general lacks the power to appoint inferior officers,” they wrote, “that conclusion would invalidate the appointment of every member of the department who exercises significant authority and occupies a continuing office, other than the few that are specifically identified in statute.”

[bllsbailey]

Judge Grants Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Request To Halt Trump’s Jan. 6 Case

Special Counsel Jack Smith speaks to the press at the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on June 9, 2023, announcing the unsealing of the indictment against former US President Donald Trump.

A federal judge granted a request from special counsel Jack Smith to pause deadlines in President-elect Donald Trump’s election interference case.

On Friday, Smith’s team released a brief regarding the developments of the case.

Smith’s team wrote “As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, the defendant is expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025. The Government respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”

This decision follows Smith’s recent discussions with Justice Department officials about steps to conclude Trump’s federal criminal cases, including those involving charges in Florida related to his retention of classified documents.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) advises against charging a sitting president with a crime.

“The Department concluded that the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions,” the OLC, which helps craft the department’s policies, determined in a 1973 memo.

Smith charged Trump with four felonies in this case, alleging he conspired to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Trump’s attorneys are required to file written arguments by November 21st, outlining their rationale for why the indictment should be dismissed in light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.

Deadlines for further filings on immunity and other matters are scheduled for the weeks surrounding the presidential transition.

According to the filing, the president-elect did not oppose suspending the upcoming deadlines. However, Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the trial, approved the request within minutes.

Smith stated he would provide another update to the court by December 2nd to “inform the Court of the result of its deliberations.”

In Trump’s Florida documents case, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the charges, ruling that Smith’s appointment was unlawful; Smith has since appealed this decision.

Trump’s attorneys argue that his status as president-elect warrants an immediate suspension of all four criminal prosecutions against him.

The special counsel has not yet moved to pause Trump’s other case involving charges of mishandling classified documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Attorneys for the president-elect are also expected to seek the cancellation of his upcoming sentencing in New York on 34 charges of falsifying business records, as well as a suspension of his election interference case in Georgia.

Smith’s filing was submitted shortly before a letter from House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chair of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, requesting that the special counsel preserve all records related to his investigation.

“The Office of Special Counsel is not immune from transparency or above accountability for its actions,” the two lawmakers wrote.

“This letter serves as a formal request to preserve all existing and future records and materials related to the Office of Special Counsel’s investigations and prosecutions of President Trump. You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently.”

Jordan was previously subpoenaed by the now-disbanded January 6th committee, which sought information about any communications he had with the Trump White House regarding Trump’s alleged plans to remain in office. The committee also questioned Loudermilk about a Capitol tour he led for two men who later participated in the January 6th march to the building.

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts

[worldofwardcraft]

The one-man crime wave.

September 9, 2024

Just like a Mafia boss, persistent scofflaw Donald Trump simply can't stop himself from committing crimes. He's already been adjudicated a rapist and sexual abuser as a result of the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. His personally owned company has been found guilty of business fraud. A New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony charges to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor. And he's under indictment in Georgia for election tampering. He's also been fined millions for operating a scam charity foundation and fake "Trump University."

Plus, he's being prosecuted in Florida for illegal retention of highly secret government documents. And while this case was erroneously dismissed by District Judge and Trump fangirl Aileen Cannon, it will no doubt be reinstated upon appeal to the 11th Circuit Court.

In addition, Special Counsel Jack Smith recently filed a superseding indictment that again accuses Trump of defying the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election. This became necessary after the corrupt political hacks on the Supreme Court invented a special rule making Trump immune from prosecution for certain conduct alleged in last year's original indictment.

The new 36-page filing maintains the original four charges — including conspiracy to defraud the United States — but leaves out evidence the Court ruled inadmissible. Now, as former US Attorney Joyce Vance points out, trial judge Chutkan "will have to decide what, if anything more, she will remove based on the arguments Trump’s lawyers will make."

But despite his ongoing criminal prosecutions, Trump refuses to cease lawbreaking. Only weeks ago, he attended ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery consisting of a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns and a memorial at a grave in section 60, which is reserved for recent US casualties. Naturally, he turned it all into a campaign event and posted a video of it on TikTok. Which is in direct violation of federal regulation 32 CFR 533.22 prohibiting political activity at Arlington. Reported The Washington Post:

It’s exactly what military officials tried to prevent. The use of the footage marked a flagrant violation of the law against partisan actions at military cemeteries, defense officials said.

Any other convicted felon who, while out on release awaiting sentencing, continues to commit crimes, would have his bail revoked forthwith and be immediately remanded to custody. But not Trump. As political blogger Jeff Tiedrich remarks, courts seem to think he's a "very special boy." He's also a very determined criminal.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kyle Cheney at Politico:

Donald Trump is on the cusp of emerging unscathed from his four criminal prosecutions — thanks almost entirely to the decisions of four judges he appointed. Trump’s three Supreme Court picks formed a decisive bloc to declare presidents immune from prosecution for official conduct — freezing the charges he faces in multiple jurisdictions for trying to subvert the 2020 election and putting his New York conviction in doubt. Then his nominee to the federal court in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon, handed him another victory by dismissing the charges he faces for hoarding classified documents and concealing them from investigators.

Her decision earned a shout-out from Trump as he accepted the Republican nomination on Thursday. “A major ruling was handed down from a highly respected federal judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon,” he said. Trump’s string of victories reflects what experts say is extraordinary luck and timing. He’s the first president since Ronald Reagan to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court, and the first to ever face criminal charges that, soon thereafter, landed in front of the very judges he put on the bench. “This is a perfect example of serendipity, how the occurrence of events and trials and tribulations of the judicial process have all combined to work in favor of Donald Trump,” said Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor and civil litigator.

But it’s also a function, those experts say, of the fact that Trump rose to power in an era when conservatives — who had been burned in the past by judicial picks that later broke ranks — had begun perfecting a strategy of appointing judges who would more reliably rule in their favor. President Joe Biden, too, has appointed judges whose backgrounds appear more reliably liberal, though it’s not yet clear whether he will have the same impact on the judiciary as his predecessor. “Today, given that politics are so important in securing a judicial appointment, I can see how that sort of concern can spread,” said David Zaring, professor of legal studies from the Wharton School of Business. “[Trump] got so lucky — people don’t usually get a chance to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court in one term. Trump got it and then the Supreme Court gave him a very favorable ruling after that.”

Cannon’s ruling in the documents case had nothing to do with the substance of the charges — widely considered to be the most clear-cut case Trump faces. Cannon found that Attorney General Merrick Garland overstepped his authority when he named Smith special counsel, invalidating the entire prosecution. But the decision — which legal experts suggested would likely be reversed on appeal — nevertheless put Trump’s already-slim odds of facing trial this year effectively out of reach. [...] Cannon, in particular, represents a stark example. She was confirmed to the bench in November 2020, days after Trump lost reelection to Joe Biden. And she drew widespread criticism two years later after she slowed the investigation by granting a longshot push by the defense to require that an independent monitor review materials the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago.

[...] Not all of Trump’s appointees have ruled uniformly in his favor throughout his yearslong odyssey through the criminal justice system. In 2022, the Supreme Court rebuffed his effort to shield his White House papers from the Jan. 6 select committee, and it declined to consider his Cannon-backed effort to keep the documents investigation frozen.

This Politico article details the influence that the judges Donald Trump appointed are helping him evade legal trouble.

[beardedmrbean]

Texas executed Gary Green on Tuesday evening despite questions about whether his intellectual disability and history of mental illness should disqualify him from a death sentence.

Green, 51, was convicted in 2010 for the murder of his wife, Lovetta Armstead, and her 6-year-old daughter, Jazzmen Montgomery, the year before. After Green learned that his wife wanted to annul their marriage, he fatally stabbed Armstead and drowned Montgomery in a bathtub, according to court filings. Green turned himself in to police and confessed to the killings.

"I took not one, but two people that we all loved, and I had to live with that while I was here. I ask that you forgive me, not for me but for y'all. I'm fixing to go home and y'all are going to be here. I want to make sure you don't suffer. You have to forgive me to heal and move on," Green said in his final statement. He was pronounced dead at 7:07 p.m. Tuesday.

Green's lawyers wrote to Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot in late February asking him to join their request to delay Green''s execution so he could undergo further tests of his intellectual disability. Creuzot did not join the motion.

RELATED Alex Murdaugh found guilty of murdering wife, son

While experts testified at his trial that Green likely had schizoaffective disorder, his lawyers say his defense counsel did not adequately look at how the condition impacted his life, or what role it played in the murders. Under Texas law, jurors are allowed to consider mitigating evidence such as mental illness when deciding on a death sentence. Green appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which upheld his conviction and death sentence.

"An explanation of Green's manifestation of schizoaffective disorder would have aided the jury in weighing Green's moral culpability for his offense," Michael Mowla, one of Green's attorneys, said in a statement. "It is clear from Green's statements that his mental state at the time of the crime was heavily influenced by his severe and persistent mental illness, especially as filtered through his severe cognitive limitations."

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 prohibited the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Texas defines intellectual disability based on low IQ scores, with 70 generally considered a threshold; how inmates interact with others and care for themselves; and whether deficiencies in those areas occurred before the age of 18. The lowest IQ score that Green submitted in his state proceedings was 78, placing him in the "borderline" range of intellectual functioning.

Green had planned to "take five lives," he wrote in a letter to Armstead. He attempted to kill Armstead's sons, then ages 9 and 12, but they persuaded him not to, according to court filings. Green then attempted suicide by consuming a large amount of Tylenol and Benadryl. When Green turned himself in to the police hours later, he said he believed the family was plotting against him.

One month before the killings, Green tried to get help at Timberlawn psychiatric hospital in Dallas. He was incorrectly diagnosed, discharged after four days and later unable to continue the antipsychotic medication he was prescribed because of cost.

Green is also involved in an ongoing legal battle over the state's use of expired drugs to kill prisoners. With fewer pharmacies willing to produce execution drugs, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has for years extended the use-by dates for lethal injections, which could make the process more painful.

RELATED Florida executes first inmate since 2019

Inmates say the state prison system should not be allowed to extend the expiration dates of its execution drugs. They claim this practice violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

[dankusner]

Aileen Cannon destroyed her good reputation for Donald Trump

Aileen Cannon testifies remotely in 2020 before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on her nomination to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida.

Cannon built a good reputation for herself as a prosecutor, but as a judge she has destroyed it for Donald Trump.

If Aileen Cannon’s 2020 confirmation process was notable for anything, it was how smooth and drama-free the whole thing played out.

Cannon, who was then-President Donald Trump’s choice to be federal judge for the Southern District of Florida, sailed through her Senate confirmation with a 56-21 vote.

Twelve Senate Democrats voted for her.

This was a remarkable display of bipartisan accord, given the acrimony at the time between congressional Republicans and Democrats.

At the very moment when the Senate confirmed Cannon, Trump was in the early stages of disputing his election defeat to Joe Biden.

A month earlier, Senate Democrats complained in vain when Republicans fast-tracked Trump’s selection of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.

That rancor, however, didn’t sully Cannon’s confirmation process.

While Cannon barely met the American Bar Association’s threshold of 12 years of legal experience to earn a “qualified” rating, her résumé was impressive and her life story was compelling.

Cannon was born in Colombia and grew up in Miami.

Her mother fled Cuba during that country’s 1959 revolution.

In high school, Cannon was named as a scholar finalist in the National Hispanic Recognition Program.

As a student at Duke University, she elected to spend a semester in Spain.

Prior to her nomination by Trump, she worked for seven years as a federal prosecutor.

“I think she’s a well-qualified, mainstream nominee,” University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias, who tracks judicial nominees, said in 2020. “Assistant U.S. attorneys know their way around the courtroom. Generally, the U.S. Senate looks favorably on those kinds of nominees.”

Seventeen of Cannon’s fellow graduates of Ransom Everglades High School in Florida, including Alejandro Miyar, a lawyer who worked in President Barack Obama’s administration, signed a letter in support of Cannon’s confirmation.

“Aileen was always an incredibly dedicated and diligent student,” Miyar told the New York Times.

Cannon's friends and associates consistently described her as someone who liked to keep a low profile.

That went out the window in 2022 when she was assigned to handle the federal criminal case against Trump for illegally retaining classified documents after he left office.

Her reputation as a fair and scrupulous arbiter of the law soon followed.

In a series of indefensible rulings, Cannon has made it clear that she intends to delay Trump’s trial for as long as possible, clearing the way for him to pardon himself next year if he wins this year’s presidential election.

Early on, Cannon issued an order calling for the appointment of a special master to review the evidence that the FBI seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

On Dec. 1, 2022, a three-judge, all-Republican panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed Cannon’s special-master order, saying the judge “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction.”

Trump’s trial was set to begin on May 20 of this year.

On May 7, however, Cannon canceled that trial date and postponed the trial indefinitely.

She also rejected a motion by special counsel Jack Smith to prevent Trump from making inflammatory statements about law enforcement after the former president falsely accused the FBI of planning to assassinate him when they collected evidence from his home.

Justice and the rule of law have been obvious casualties of Cannon’s transparent efforts to protect Trump.

But Cannon’s reputation has also suffered irreparable harm.

She was capable of more.

She worked hard and built an impressive career for herself.

She had the respect of her peers.

And she threw it all away for Trump.

In doing so, she joins a long roster of Republicans who subjugated their moral compass, abdicated their self-respect and made sycophantic clowns of themselves at Trump’s behest.

Of the four criminal indictments that Trump has faced since leaving office, the classified documents case is by far the strongest and most clear-cut.

Trump resisted repeated requests to return those documents, which included sensitive nuclear secrets, and lied to federal authorities about them.

The Aileen Cannon who served as a federal prosecutor would understand what an abhorrent abuse of power that represents.

That Aileen Cannon wouldn’t make a mockery of a serious criminal case that could determine the legal limits of presidential authority.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A federal judge on Monday dismissed former President Donald Trump's lawsuit challenging the government's access to materials seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort, marking the formal end to Trump's monthslong legal fight following the FBI's raid of his home.

The judge's order came four days after Trump declined to appeal a higher-court ruling that canceled the appointment of a special master to review the thousands of items taken by federal agents during an Aug. 8 raid of Trump's Florida residence.

Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, signed a one-page order dismissing the case for lack of jurisdiction. The order, filed in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, also terminated all hearings, deadlines and motions that were still pending in the case. That includes Trump's effort to obtain an unredacted version of the search warrant affidavit that was used to sanction the raid.

A spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

Cannon in September had appointed retired Judge Raymond Dearie as special master, while she blocked the Justice Department from reviewing the seized materials as part of a criminal investigation.

The Mar-a-Lago raid turned up more than 100 documents bearing classified markings. A team hired by Trump found more records marked classified outside of the resort, multiple outlets recently reported. Last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel to oversee an ongoing criminal probe into Trump's removal of hundreds of documents from the White House.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled Dec. 1 that Cannon should not have appointed the special master, writing that she "improperly exercised" an expansion of her jurisdiction.

"Dismissal of the entire proceeding is required," read the opinion of the panel, which included two judges appointed by Trump.

"The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so," the judges wrote.

The panel gave the former president one week to seek a stay of its ruling by filing an appeal to the full circuit or to the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump's attorneys did not file an appeal.

They had already faced rejection from the Supreme Court as part of the case: The high court in October batted away Trump's request to reverse a prior ruling from the 11th Circuit, which had barred the special master from examining the classified documents.

Last week's ruling from the appeals court could clear a path for federal investigators to more quickly review the thousands of items they had previously been blocked from accessing.

[follow-up-news]

The Justice Department is appealing the length of prison sentences for four Proud Boys leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy in the U.S. Capitol attack, challenging punishments that were significantly shorter than what prosecutors had recommended, according to court filings. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio and three lieutenants to prison terms ranging from 15 to 22 years after a jury convicted them in May of plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election. Tarrio’s 22-year sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, but prosecutors had sought 33 years behind bars for the Miami man. Attorney Nayib Hassan said in an email that the defense team will review prosecutors’ reasoning for appealing the sentencing but is preparing its own appeal and believes it will “prevail on multiple grounds.” Prosecutors, who made their court filings on Monday, also had recommended sentences of 33 years for former Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida; 30 years for Proud Boys chapter leader Zachary Rehl, of Philadelphia; and 27 years in prison for chapter leader Ethan Nordean, of Auburn, Washington. Kelly sentenced Nordean to 18 years, Biggs to 17 years and Rehl to 15 years. Defense attorney Norm Pattis, who represents Biggs and Rehl, said in a text message that the government’s appeals are “ridiculous.” “Merrick Garland needs a new hobby horse,” Pattis said of the attorney general, whose Justice Department secured the convictions.