Judge Cannon Takes Up Trump Jim Trusty Defense to Sua Sponte

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Judge Aileen Cannon Grinds Trump's Classified Documents/Obstruction/Espionage Case to a Halt
by Glenn Kirschner
May 23, 2024



Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon should not be presiding over Trump's federal prosecution in Florida. She has brounght the case to a screeching halt be declining to resolve motions in a timely manner and by refusing to even set a trial date. Judge Cannon is NOT an honest broker of the law, and the federal law requires a judge to be removed when his/her "impartially might reasonably be questions."

This vide reviews the latest hearing conducted by Judge Cannon, which provides further evidence of her determination to slow walk the case so as to prevent a timely trial.

Transcript


well friends judge aen Cannon has slowed
Donald Trump's Federal prosecution in
Florida to a crawl or maybe she's just
brought it to a complete
stop let's talk about that because
Justice matters
[Music]
hey all Glen kersner here so friends
Trump appointed judge aen Cannon who is
presiding over Donald Trump's federal
case down in Florida the case in which
Donald Trump is being prosecuted for
unlawfully retaining classified
documents obstructing justice and
violating our nation's Espionage laws
judge Cannon held a rare Hearing in the
case and now she has all but brought the
case to a grinding
halt judge Cannon has no business
presiding over this case we the people
deserve better we deserve a fair
independent and impartial judge
let's look at some of the new
reporting this from
CNN Headline Florida Hearing in Trump
classified documents case devolves into
shouting
match and that article begins during a
marathon day of proceedings in the
maralago classified documents case a
morning Hearing in front of Judge aen
Cannon devolved into a shouting match
amongst the attorneys and the afternoon
series of arguments prompted the judge
to wonder if the legal nuances of the
case may be too difficult for jurors to
understand what the hell does that
mean the prosecutors brought a case
against Donald Trump they're enforcing
the laws of our nation in a very real
sense We the People the American people
are the victims of Donald Trump Trump's
crimes including Espionage offenses that
undoubtedly did real and perhaps lasting
damage to our national security and a
federal judge says you know I just
wonder if the jury is capable of even
deciding this case what with all the
nuances what the hell does that
mean that's not the kind of language we
typically hear from judges I've never
heard language like that in the 30 years
I prosecuted cases in military courts
and civilian courts in federal courts
and local courts in trial courts and
appellate
courts judge Canon has no business
presiding over this
case and I'm not even going to take time
discussing the shouting match where some
of the defense attorneys were making all
of these absurd claims of prosecutorial
misconduct that the prosecutors said and
I quote are absolute garbage and untrue
not the kind of language you typically
hear from federal prosecutors in court
but I'm going to set all that aside and
I want to turn to some more of the
reporting because what I want to do
friends is take on two of the legal
issues that the defendants two of the
three defendants Walt NAA and Donald
Trump Carlos De ala is the third
defendant some of the legal issues that
two of the defendants um offered to
judge Cannon suggesting that these are
actually viable legal issues and because
judge Cannon has to address these legal
issu issues she basically you know slows
the prosecution down to a crawl and I
want to take on those two issues let's
shift over to some new reporting by the
Associated
Press headline judging the Florida Trump
classified documents case will hear more
arguments on dismissing
charges and that article begins
prosecutors and defense lawyers in the
classified documents case against former
president Donald Trump are due in court
Wednesday for the first time since the
judge indefinitely postponed the trial
earlier this month let me say that again
she indefinitely postponed the
trial she asked the parties the
prosecutors and the defense attorneys
previously for proposed trial dates that
worked for them prosecutors Jack Smith
said July 8th defense attorneys for
Donald Trump and his co-defendants said
a August 12 so August 12 would have been
a no-brainer of a trial date that's the
date that was offered by the defense
they said they could do it on August
12th judge Cannon said nope nope not
July 8th not August 12th in fact I'm
setting no trial
date judge Cannon should not be
presiding over this
case let's go back to the AP
article the case among four criminal
prosecutions against Trump had been set
for trial on May 20th but Trump
appointed US District Judge aen Cannon
cited numerous issues she has yet to
resolve as a basis for cancelling the
trial date I've got to interject again
here friends she has just taken her time
resolving these issues and now
she cites the very delay occasioned by
her sloth and
neglect if not incompetence and
nefariousness she now cites the delay
that she caused as a reason she can't
even set a trial
date judge Cannon should not be
presiding over this
case back to the APR
on Wednesday Canon was scheduled to hear
arguments on a trump request to dismiss
the indictment on grounds that it fails
to clearly articulate a crime and
instead amounts to quote a personal and
political attack against President Trump
with a Litany of uncharged grievances
both for public and media
consumption prosecutors on special
counsel Jack Smith's team which brought
the case will argue against that request
Trump a republican is not expected to be
present for the
hearing okay friends now let's turn to
two of the issues two of the Motions to
dismiss the case one that was filed by
Walt NAA one of Trump's codefendants and
the other that was filed by Donald Trump
himself now mind you they filed these
motions saying the cases against them
must be dismissed in their entirety they
can't be prosecuted let's take on Na's
claim first Walt Na's lawyers claimed
that NAA is the victim of what's called
selective prosecution now first of all
the doctrine of selective prosecution is
a thing right there is a legal Doctrine
known as selective prosecution let's
let's talk about precisely what it
is so the leading case regarding
selective prosecution the leading
precedent from the Supreme Court is a
case that arose in the aftermath of the
Vietnam draft The Selective Service it's
a case called weight versus the United
States W yte and here's what it involved
during the draft back in the Vietnam era
there were more than 670,000 people
people who failed to register for the
draft or who refused to register for the
draft and it was a crime there was a
statute on the books that said if you
fail to register for the draft you're
committing a federal offense and so you
know after the Vietnam War ended the
Department of Justice had to decide well
what do we do with the more than 670,000
people who failed or refused to register
for the draft and they decided that they
would prosecute some of them out of the
more than 670,000 people who didn't
register for the draft guess how many
the Department of Justice
prosecuted 13 people just 13 out of the
more than 670,000 and those 13
defendants filed motions to dismiss
their cases claiming selective
prosecution how in the world can you
only prosecute 13 out of 67 ,000 who
committed the same
crime sounds like an argument that might
have some Merit right well the Supreme
Court decided it really doesn't have
much Merit and they announced a test and
it was a test that set a very high Bar
for a defendant to prove that he or she
was being selectively prosecuted in a
way that violated the Constitution and
the test essentially is is that the the
defendant would have to prove that the
prosecutors um not only discriminated in
who they decided to prosecute and who
they decided not to prosecute but they
announced that it would have to be
discriminatory in its effect in other
words some people unfairly got
prosecuted and others didn't and it
would have to be discriminatory in its
purpose in other words you'd have to
prove the prosecutor's int tended to
discriminate by sing singling out one
person or another for prosecution while
foregoing prosecution of others for the
same crime and in the weight case the
Supreme Court said the defendants showed
neither discriminatory effect nor
discriminatory purpose or intent by the
prosecutor so the courts rejected all of
those motions to dismiss if you're
interested one of the reasons doj
decided to prosecute these 13 is they
were among I think some of the most
vocal proponents of people not
registering people violating the federal
law and they were urging people not to
register basically urging them to commit
crime um and for various reasons the
Department of Justice obviously couldn't
prosecute all
670 uh
67,000 so they chose these 13 as they
were the ones who for some factual
reason were most worthy of prosecution
and the Supreme Court said that's just
fine Walt
NAA being selectively prosecuted what
because tons of other people were
criminally helping the defendant Donald
Trump unlawfully retain National
Security information and obstructing
justice by moving boxes around and
hiding them from the FBI and from the
doj and from the grand jury subpoena
requiring their return because there are
you know so many other hundreds or
thousands of people who were also
criminally complicit with Donald Trump
doing the same
thing it's an absurd Claim by Walt naada
that he's being selectively Prosecuting
I think the fact that he offers is that
well other people may have touched the
boxes come on sport it's a frivolous
motion to dismiss a baseless motion to
dismiss I would go so far as to say it
could be called a bad faith motion to
dismiss so what would a judge a normal
judge a fair impartial and independent
judge do with a motion like that well
she would read the motion she would read
the prosecutor's reply relying on the
case law including the Supreme Court
precedent on the issue of selective
prosecution and she would deny the
motion on the papers and she would do it
promptly like literally within days of
the prosecutor's opposition being filed
done let's move on we need to set a
trial date we need to move the case
forward in the direction of a
trial but no not judge Cannon let's just
at our at a leisurely Pace set this
thing sometime in the future to have
motions hearings have oral arguments and
then I'll take lots of time maybe weeks
or months to actually resolve something
that is a BS motion a frivolous
motion right a bad faith motion could
have been resolved in an instant but
instead it lingers for
months that's not a judge acting in good
faith that's a judge who is proving over
and over again that she has no business
presiding over this case let's now turn
to Donald Trump's motion which is
perhaps even more frivolous than Walt
Na's selective prosecution motion and it
was mentioned in that AP article that I
read a moment ago Trump requested to
dismiss the indictment on grounds that
it fails to clearly articulate a crime
and instead amounts to a personal and
political attack against President Trump
with a Litany of uncharged grievances
both for public and media consumption
friends that is not the the language of
legal
motions of federal court filings what
that sounds like is an angry unhinged
tweet that's not a legal argument that's
a bunch of PR
blather and claiming that the indictment
in the case which chapter and verse sets
out each and every alleged crime that
the grand grand jury indicted Donald
Trump for in many ways it's kind of a
standard indictment it is constructed
the way federal indictments are
constructed every day of the week a
hundred times over and have been for
decades there's no deficiency there's no
infirmity there's no basis to file a
motion to dismiss the indictment because
gosh darn it it just criticizes Donald
Trump too much
you know what a judge would do with
that I have to tell you there are
defense motions that are so frivolous
that sometimes judges sarily reject them
without even asking the prosecutors to
file a response or an opposition because
it just kind of falls under the weight
of its own frivolity it's so bad it's so
ridiculous it's so unsupportable and
unsupported by any case law but judge
Canon had the prosecutors file an
opposition and the minute she got that
opposition she could have read it and
rejected the motion to dismiss on the
papers but no need to take a lot of time
have a lot of hearings sometime well off
into the future then maybe someday I'll
get around to deciding the
issue judge Cannon should not be
presiding over this case we the people
have a dog in this fight we have an
interest in a fair just reliable
outcome right and the only way we can be
assured of a fair just and reliable
outcome is if a fair independent
impartial judge is assigned to preside
over this Federal prosecution in Florida
now friends about a week ago or so I um
did a Justice matters video that has a
step-by-step tutorial on how you anybody
who's interested can file a Judicial
Complaint Form against judge Cannon and
I will put a link to that video in the
description of this video um and if I
knew how to like put one of those little
buttons on the screen at the end of my
video so you could just click on it
maybe I'll try to get somebody to help
me with that but you may have heard me
say that you know on the computer front
I am e incompetent you know I can't even
spell
it um but one way or another I'll try to
direct your attention to that earlier
video that I know a lot of folks used
and they followed the step-by-step
instructions and they submitted they
mailed which is how you have to get it
to the 11 circuit court of appeals that
is the court that has supervisory
responsibility over judge Cannon and
those in that federal district um a lot
of people took advantage of that
step-by-step video and they submitted
those judicial complaint forms which any
member of the public can uh submit if
you feel like judge Cannon's
impartiality might reasonably be
questioned which is the federal standard
that requires her to remove herself from
the case you can go ahead and file one
of those judicial comp complaint
forms and I would urge you to consider
doing
it you know
why because
Justice
matters friends as always please stay
safe please stay tuned and I look
forward to talking with you all again
tomorrow

For a step-by-step guide to how every American citizen can file a judicious complaint form demanding a fair, impartial, and independent be appointed to preside over Trump Florida case, please click on the following link:


Judge Aileen Cannon's Bias Is Showing

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Judge in Trump Documents Case Rejected Suggestions to Step Aside: Two federal judges in South Florida privately urged Aileen M. Cannon to decline the case when it was assigned to her last year, according to two people briefed on the matter. She chose to keep it.
By Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer
New York Times
June 20, 2024

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Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s assignment to handle former President Donald J. Trump’s case raised eyebrows because she has scant trial experience and had shown unusual favor to Mr. Trump.

Shortly after Judge Aileen M. Cannon drew the assignment in June 2023 to oversee former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, two more experienced colleagues on the federal bench in Florida urged her to pass it up and hand it off to another jurist, according to two people briefed on the conversations.

The judges who approached Judge Cannon — including the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, Cecilia M. Altonaga — each asked her to consider whether it would be better if she were to decline the high-profile case, allowing it to go to another judge, the two people said.

But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wanted to keep the case and refused the judges’ entreaties. Her assignment drew attention because she has scant trial experience and had previously shown unusual favor to Mr. Trump by intervening in a way that helped him in the criminal investigation that led to his indictment, only to be reversed in a sharply critical rebuke by a conservative appeals court panel.

The extraordinary and previously undisclosed effort by Judge Cannon’s colleagues to persuade her to step aside adds another dimension to the increasing criticism of how she has gone on to handle the case.

She has broken, according to lawyers who operate there, with a general practice of federal judges in the Southern District of Florida of delegating some pretrial motions to a magistrate judge — in this instance, Judge Bruce E. Reinhart. While he is subordinate to her, Judge Reinhart is an older and much more experienced jurist. In 2022, he was the one who signed off on an F.B.I. warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club and residence in Florida, for highly sensitive government files that Mr. Trump kept after leaving office.

Since then, Judge Cannon has exhibited hostility to prosecutors, handled pretrial motions slowly and indefinitely postponed the trial, declining to set a date for it to begin even though both the prosecution and the defense had told her they could be ready to start this summer.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers have also urged her to delay any trial until after the election, and her handling of the case has virtually ensured that they will succeed in that strategy. Should Mr. Trump retake the White House, he could order the Justice Department to drop the case.

As Judge Cannon’s handling of the case has come under intensifying scrutiny, her critics have suggested that she could be in over her head, in the tank for Mr. Trump — or both.

Judge Cannon has broken with a general practice of delegating some pretrial motions to her assigned magistrate judge — in this instance, Judge Bruce E. Reinhart.

Against that backdrop, word of the early efforts by her colleagues on the bench to persuade her to step aside — and the significance of her decision not to do so — has spread among other federal judges and the people who know them.

Neither Judge Cannon nor Judge Altonaga directly responded to requests for comment, including by emails sent via the clerk of the district court, Angela E. Noble. Ms. Noble later wrote in an email: “Our judges do not comment on pending cases.”

It is routine for novice judges to look to more experienced jurists for informal advice or mentoring as they learn to perform their new roles. And as the district’s chief, Judge Altonaga has a formal role in administering the federal judiciary in South Florida.

But ultimately, Judge Cannon is not subject to the authority of her district court elders. Like any Senate-confirmed, presidentially appointed judge, she has a life tenure and independent standing and is free to choose to ignore any such advice.

The two people who discussed the efforts to persuade her to hand off the case spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. Each had been told about it by different federal judges in the Southern District of Florida, including Judge Altonaga.

Neither of the people identified the second federal judge in Florida who had reached out to Judge Cannon. One of the people confirmed the effort to persuade Judge Cannon to step aside but did not describe the details of the conversations the two judges had with her. The other person offered more details.

This person said each outreach took place by telephone. The first judge to call Judge Cannon, this person said, suggested to her that it would be better for the case to be handled by a jurist based closer to the district’s busiest courthouse in Miami, where the grand jury that indicted Mr. Trump had sat.

The Miami courthouse also had a secure facility approved to hold the sort of highly classified information that would be discussed in pretrial motions and used as evidence in the case. Judge Cannon is the sole judge in the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, a two-hour drive north of Miami. When she was assigned to the case, the courthouse in Fort Pierce did not have a secure facility.

Because Judge Cannon kept the case, taxpayers have since had to pay to build a secure room — known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or S.C.I.F. — there.

After that initial argument failed to sway Judge Cannon to step aside, the person said, Judge Altonaga placed a call.

The chief judge — an appointee of former President George W. Bush — is said to have made a more pointed argument: It would be bad optics for Judge Cannon to oversee the trial because of what had happened during the criminal investigation that led to Mr. Trump’s indictment on charges of illegally retaining national security documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.

In August 2022, the F.B.I. obtained a search warrant from Judge Reinhart to go to Mar-a-Lago to hunt for any remaining classified documents that Mr. Trump had failed to turn over after receiving a subpoena for them.

The agents found thousands of government files that Mr. Trump had kept, even though under the Presidential Records Act they should have gone to the National Archives when he left office. The files the F.B.I. recovered included over 100 marked as classified, including some at the most highly restricted level.

Soon after the search, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit against the government protesting the seizure of the materials, which he claimed were his personal property, and asking for a special master to be appointed to sift through them. Rather than letting Judge Reinhart handle that lawsuit, as would be the normal procedure, Judge Cannon chose to decide the matter.

Shocking legal experts across ideological lines, she barred investigators from gaining access to the evidence and appointed a special master, although she said that person would only make recommendations to her and she would make the final decisions.

Judge Cannon’s decision was unusual in part because she intervened before there were any charges — treating Mr. Trump differently from typical targets of search warrants based on his supposed special status as a former president.

She also directed the special master to consider whether some of the seized files should be permanently kept from investigators under executive privilege, a notion that was widely seen as dubious since it has never successfully been made in a criminal case.

Prosecutors appealed to the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. In a repudiation, a three-judge panel that included two Trump appointees reversed her order and ruled that she never had legal authority to intervene in the first place.

“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the panel wrote.

Limits on when courts can interfere with a criminal investigation “apply no matter who the government is investigating,” it added. “To create a special exception here would defy our nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank.’”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, but it declined to hear the case. In December 2022, Judge Cannon dismissed Mr. Trump’s lawsuit.

Six months later, the grand jury in Miami indicted Mr. Trump, alleging in detail how he had stored highly sensitive documents in a bathroom and on a stage at Mar-a-Lago and persistently led his aides and lawyers to stymie efforts by the Justice Department and the National Archives to recover them.

Under the district’s standard practices, according to its clerk, the new case went into a system that would randomly assign it to one of a handful of judges whose chambers are in the West Palm Beach division, which covers Mar-a-Lago, or in either of its two adjoining divisions, Fort Pierce and Fort Lauderdale.

It went to Judge Cannon.

Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy. More about Charlie Savage. Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.