Bye, bye Aileen

Judge Aileen Cannon ran her courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida, like a massage parlor for one of Jeffrey Epstein’s best friends, and on Monday she wrapped up her special service when she dismissed all charges against Donald Trump in his trial for stealing and mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s attempts to recover them.  Trump initially faced 31 felony counts of violating the Espionage Act, five counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice, and one count of making false statements. Cannon dismissed the case on procedural grounds, without ever considering the mountain of incriminating evidence against Trump: 

• More than 100 top-secret documents, including one containing nuclear secrets, were seized by the FBI in a search of Trump’s hotel/club/residence, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida in August of 2022. 
• Another tranche of more than 30 classified documents Trump had turned over to the Department of Justice in response to a subpoena. 
• Surveillance video shows Mar-a-Lago employees moving boxes containing classified documents from room to room in Mar-a-Lago a day before DOJ officials showed up to serve the subpoena. 
• Testimony from Mar-a-Lago employees that the boxes of classified documents were moved at the behest of the former president.

The list goes on, but you get the picture. Days before he left office in 2021, Donald Trump illegally removed from his White House residence hundreds of boxes of government property. He then spent more than a year and a half resisting attempts by the government to recover the material, in violation of laws against obstructing justice. And he induced others to help him in the scheme.

In November of 2022, Jack Smith was appointed special counsel to investigate and potentially prosecute Donald Trump in the classified documents case. The case landed in the court of a Florida judge Trump appointed to the bench, Aileen Cannon. Almost immediately, Judge Cannon began a four-on-the-floor, pedal-to-the-metal campaign of stalling and obstructing the attempts of Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump. She granted a motion to appoint a “special master” to go through not only the classified material seized by the FBI but all the material he took from the White House. The ostensible reason for the special master was to examine the material to see if any of it was subject to either executive or attorney-client privilege. While the order was in effect, neither the FBI nor the special counsel was allowed to even look at the evidence in the investigation. Smith appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and in late December, Cannon’s order was overturned.

Trump was charged in June of 2023, and another flurry of delaying motions was unleashed by Trump’s defense, allowing Judge Cannon to take weeks and then months to consider individual motions, one by one, and to schedule individual hearings on each motion.  She would take weeks to consider Trump’s motions and the special counsel’s replies, and then weeks to schedule the hearings, and she would take more weeks before issuing her rulings on each delaying motion.

It was during this process that Trump’s defense team made a motion to dismiss the charges based on its theory that the special counsel was improperly and unconstitutionally appointed, thus the prosecution he brought was unconstitutional as well.

It was no surprise to legal experts today when Judge “I’m Delaying Just As Fast As I Can” Cannon dismissed the charges, especially since Justice Clarence Thomas, in a footnote to the court’s decision finding that Trump is immune from prosecution for official acts he took as president, put forth his theory that the special counsel was unconstitutionally appointed.  Justice Thomas’ theory had nothing to do with the presidential immunity case, but it was inevitable that it would be noticed by Judge Cannon and used as a rationale to dismiss the charges against Trump in the classified documents case which she did Monday in a 93-page ruling that Smith’s appointment “violates the appointments clause of the United States Constitution.” Cannon even went along with the motion made by Trump that the funding of the special counsel’s office was unconstitutional because it violated the “role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law.”

As the New York Times reported on Monday afternoon, Cannon’s ruling “flew in the face of previous court decisions reaching back to the Watergate era that upheld the legality of the ways in which independent prosecutors have been named.”  That wouldn’t bother Cannon, however, because most of what she has done over the last two years in the classified documents case has been not only unusual but unprecedented, including hearing oral arguments from third parties who filed outside briefs supporting Trump motions that included the one she ruled on today.

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One massive irony in Cannon’s ruling is that it throws into question the appointment of other special counsels, including that of Robert Hur, who is prosecuting the son of the president, Hunter Biden, meaning that the charges against him may be dismissed as well.

The Department of Justice has already authorized Smith to appeal Cannon’s ruling to the 11th Circuit, which would make its third appeal to that court since November of 2022. The 11th Circuit, as it has before, will probably slap down Cannon’s ruling and order the case to be reinstated.  The special counsel is bound to include in its appeal an argument that Judge Cannon be dismissed from the case. If the 11th Circuit approves that motion, a new judge will be appointed to the case.  He or she will no doubt take a month or two to get up to speed on the case.  Previous delaying motions filed by Trump are still pending, so the judge will have to rule on those before a trial date can be set. 

But, if the 11th Circuit overturns Cannon’s ruling, Trump will doubtlessly appeal to the Supreme Court, and we already know what they think about his standing before the law.

And then, of course, there is the election, which will determine who will be the next President of the United States. If Trump wins, he will without a doubt dismiss the special counsel and have his new Attorney General – he might appoint Aileen Cannon; stranger things have happened – dismiss the classified documents charges against him…yet again.

Round and round Aileen Cannon has gone down there in Florida, and round and round we go as the clock ticks toward Election Day in November, and where it stops, nobody knows.