“Incomprehensible”: Experts warn Judge Cannon’s ruling against Trump opens up “nightmare scenario”
Cannon seemed to invite Trump to raise the argument again at trial, where Jack Smith can't appeal, expert says
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday rejected one of former President Donald Trump’s motions to dismiss his classified documents case.
Cannon shot down Trump’s motion arguing that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally vague when applied to a former president.
Cannon after a daylong hearing issued an order saying some of Trump’s arguments warrant “serious consideration” but wrote that no judge has ever found the statute unconstitutional. Cannon said that “rather than prematurely decide now,” she denied the motion so it could be "raised as appropriate in connection with jury-instruction briefing and/or other appropriate motions."
…
“The Judge’s ruling was virtually incomprehensible, even to those of us who speak ‘legal’ as our native language,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wrote on Substack, calling part of her ruling “deliberately dumb.”
“The good news here is temporary,” Vance wrote. “It’s what I’d call an ugly win for the government. The Judge dismissed the vagueness argument—but just for today. She did it ‘without prejudice,’ which means that Trump’s lawyers could raise the argument again later in the case. In fact, the Judge seemed to do just that in her order, essentially inviting the defense to raise the argument again at trial.”
She is 100% just doing what the federalist society is telling her to do
I think we’ve learned from Clarence Thomas, federal judges are on the take. I hope someone is paying close attention to Cannon’s finances.
So by doing this the way she has set it up, she can now allow Trump's lawyers to present this amazingly poor case that the espionage act is too vague. If she then grants that motion to toss the charge, Jack Smith cannot appeal it, nor can Trump be charged with it again because of Double Jeopardy.
Our only hope is that Jack Smith is right now working on his case to force her recusal from the case, that he'll need to make to the 11th circuit.
EDIT - This all requires a jury sworn in - forgot that part.
Oh, so that’s how she’s intentionally fucking it up.
To clarify for future confused readers, most of us aren't mad that she is denying the motions to dismiss, far from it, but we're mad that she is doing so in a way that allows the defence to use these same ridiculous arguments in court.
The first request is that the "Espionage Act" is too vague to enforce, which is pretty much not how laws work at all. Generally the more vague it is: the more illegal activities fall under it.
The second request is that the Presidential Records Act allows the Trump Admin to decide which documents were personal at will and therefor gives him complete immunity. Which, again, is pure idiocy, but Judge Canon hasn't even given a ruling on that motion.
Member when they were like "o no the DNC is absolutely going to run Hillary" and everyone was like "lol well she can at least beat trump" and then four years of utter political insanity and this judge gets the biggest case to come out of that infected turd circus?
I dunno i thought i was going somewhere with that but maybe it's just a still life
Remember when Hilary threw the election away by not even campaigning in what were otherwise secure democratic states that she lost, and how she spent so much time giving secret talks to rich people and corporations behind security and white noise generators, and generally did everything she could to be unlikable? and if she had put in even the slighest modicum of effort, she'd be the president we complained about instead of the Trump horror show despite of all of Russias interference and bullshit?
I mean all of that might be true but I still put a lot of blame on the assholes who voted for trump.
Sometimes we act like only Democrats have agency, and Republicans are just like a force of nature. Like a fire that burns without thought or a bear that mauls because that's what bears do. But they're still people and they could have chosen something else.
Trump supporters are at fault.
"Clinton didn't come to my state and make me feel special" is not an acceptable justification for supporting the catastrofuck that is trump.
Its not "Clinton didnt come to my state and make me feel special"
its
"Clinton didnt go to these states, to engage with her base and share with them her vision, plans, goals, etc, Which allowed just enough to be swayed by those that did"
If this was 1840 I'd be more convinced. We have the internet. We've had radio for a hundred years. You shouldn't need to go to a rally to know what a major politican's visions, plans, goals, etc, are.
"I felt ignored" is a stupid emotional response, but I can understand it, kind of. Sometimes I'm petty, too. Feeling so ignored that you vote for trump is inexcusable, though. I don't think I'd excuse shirking your civic duty here, either.
You are sure hung up on this whole "I was ignored" thing.
Are you, specifically, upset that cause you felt ignored?
That's what I took from the "she didn't come to my state and share her vision with me, specifically" thing. Or the related "I don't like being called flyover country ", I guess. Maybe I just don't get the people in question.
I live in a major city and don't feel politically ignored. A little, what do you call it, victim of a tyranny of a minority, sometimes, what with like North and South Dakota having senators.
To be fair, that's mostly what her campaign manager was supposed to work out.
Mooooooook
Remember when the party fucked over Bernie for an institutionalized candidate who no-one liked instead?
And if you want to argue that they didn't have a choice, it's the difference of 300 delegates in the face of internal organizational opinion that you control. You can't maintain that it wasn't a choice. The DNC chose Hilary.
How idiotic can you get? If no one liked the nominee she wouldn't have had the most votes.
By "DNC" you mean the voters?
Exactly. Stop pretending it wasn't the voter's choice. That is Trump level bullshit. There just wasn't enough of us voting Bernie.
You sweet summer child
I'm with you bud. This shit is confounding.
Also, you had my upvote at 'member'.
All I remember is Bernie voters making all this noise online and not turning out at the primaries. I turned out though, did you?
Many, many people turned out for the primaries. Just to find their polling places closed or their name purged off registered voter roles.
People DID show up for 2016. The DNC railroaded Hillary through anyways. If you're going to remember history, remember WHY it went poorly, ffs.
In such huge numbers right? You have evidence of this as it's not conspiracy right?
I remember this noise being made too and it had no basis back then, but again, please feel free to provide the evidence.
I remember history. None of that happened. Bernie lost by 8M votes. This was a decade ago, move on and stop spreading Russian propaganda.
The chair of the DNC was forced to resign because the Democrats were caught conspiring against Sanders theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/24/debbie-wasserman-schultz-resigns-dnc-chair-emails-sanders "She has been forced to step aside after a leak of internal DNC emails showed officials actively favouring Hillary Clinton during the presidential primary and plotting against Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders."
Sanders supporters sued the DNC and their defense was picking the Democratic nominee was free speech and that they had every right to, “go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.”
Despite article IV section 5 of the DNC charter stating, "The chairperson is required to exercise impartiality and evenhandedness in the preparation and conduct of the presidential nomination process, specifically between the presidential candidates and campaigns. It is important that all parties involved adhere to these guidelines to ensure a fair and just process for all candidates."
You'll notice and nowhere in your link does it say anything about purging voter rolls and closing polling places.
I didn't say they did? But they did argue in court that the Primaries are just a show and that they're going to nominate whomever they decide. And WikiLeaks revealed that they were conspiring against Sanders.
Thank you that was the link I was going to get too. And yes, HRC still won, but it is not arguable that the DNC didn't put their thumb on the scale for her which is - very plainly - anti-Democratic.
The only lawsuit the Sanders campaign filed was withdrawn on further clarification over use of DNC voter targeting systems. Again, you are spreading misinformation.
I think you misread, I Said Sander's supporters filed a lawsuit. Here's the case
https://casetext.com/case/wilding-v-dnc-servs-corp
It wasn’t purged voting lists, it was pre-committed superdelegates for the DNC. They didn’t need to give a shit what happened at the poles.
If you remove the super delegates from the primary, Clinton still handily beat sanders. If you give sanders every super delegate of a state of a primary he won to him, Clinton still handily beat him.
It was never close, she beat him by 12 percentage points.
This part really stands out for me, because of where the criticism is coming from...
It hints at the judge's decision not being impartial.
If a jury would overrule the argument "no judge has ever ruled this unconstitutionally vague, including the judge on this case right now" then they were never going to find him guilty regardless.
Why does America treats presidents and ex-presidente as a protected class of citizens?
It's kind of funny.
They treat them like royalty. Even more royal than royals are treated.
Wealthy and connected
She only got her position by giving a wristy to Trump.
The Federalist Society wanted to put young judges in positions so that they'd last a long time.
In the process, they made a Cannon a judge, someone who doesn't know the difference between sanitation and sanitization. If there was ever a judge to get removed for sheer incompetence, it would be her.
We just need to make sure we reclaim and reform the supreme court so that we can yeet all her awful decisions until she can be removed from office.
Indeed
Lmao.
Please offer this legally bullshit argument to 12 random people.
We're all fucked.
Passing the buck like a coward.
I thought everything could be appealed. How can this not be?
In the US model of justice, the judge decides questions of law, and the jury decides questions of fact. This order appears to delegate a law question ("is it constitutional?") to a jury during the trial. If the jury finds the defendant innocent, then double jeopardy prevents any appeal which would change that verdict. Nobody, once declared innocent, can be put on criminal trial again for the same incident.
When a trial involving a jury has resulted in a judgement of innocence it can't be appealed under pretty much any circumstances at all. The only way to appeal from the prosecution when they didn't win is if it's a hung trial / mistrial or equivalent error and there wasn't a ruling of innocence.
(under US law, plenty of other countries have some ability to appeal if they believe there was some serious error or new evidence has been found)
Not everything can be appealed. Especially if something is dismissed with prejudice, that's basically calling it officially dead.
The interesting thing about this case is that the espionage act actually is a dystopian nightmare. So while on the one hand I don’t want Trump to get special treatment, on the other hand, constitutional limits on this overly broad law might not be all bad.
I can 100% guarantee that if Trump wins this case, they'll just loophole former president's out of it and leave the act as is.