It’s the anniversary of that day again. Reflect and remember.
In Trump criminal justice news — remember the documents case? The one in Florida? In the past few weeks we’ve all been looking hard at the Georgia and federal J6 indictments. What’s been happening in Florida?
The answer is, not a whole lot. David Kurtz writes at TPM that Judge Cannon is deliberately slow walking the case.
Welp, we’re coming up on a month since U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued any meaningful orders or rulings in the Mar-a-Lago documents case – and frankly that’s a generous application of the word “meaningful.”
Back on Aug. 17, Cannon did issue an order but it was more notable for kicking the can on the case than actually moving it forward. And since then, very little has happened in the Mar-a-Lago case. If you’re watching closely to see if Cannon is slow-rolling the case to the benefit of Trump, whose entire legal strategy at this point across multiple prosecutions is delay, then the past month is plenty cause for concern.
Here’s what Cannon still hasn’t done:
- Issued a protective order covering the handling of classified documents in the case.
- Held Garcia hearings on the potential conflicts of interest facing two of the defense counsel in the case.
But it’s actually even a little worse than that: Cannon hasn’t even scheduled hearings on these matters yet, even though they’ve been pending in one form or another for weeks.
There are more examples of dithering, so read the whole post. The last hearing Judge Cannon held in this case was on July 18, when she denied the government’s motion for a CIPA protective order. She gave Smith and crew a chance to re-up its motion, which they did later in July. Crickets since.
Will Jack Smith let this stand?
In other news: On Friday U.S. District Judge Steve Jones denied Mark Meadows’s bid to move his case from Georgia state court to federal court. Today Meadows appealed the decision to the to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In that filing, Meadows’ lawyers argued that several aspects of the district court’s order departed from precedent, including failing to credit Meadows’ account of his conduct and duties and raising the burden on Meadows to justify the removal of his case from state court.
I take it this means Judge Jones failed to appreciate that overturning an election in Georgia is a normal duty for a White House chief of staff.
This afternoon, Judge Jones replied to Meadows’ emergency request by ordering Georgia prosecutors to file a brief in response by Tuesday at 12 p.m. ET. So there are more twists and turns ahead.
In more other news: A few days ago I wrote about the PEPFAR program that has been very effective in fighting AIDS in Africa. An unsupported rumor claims that PEPFAR has been funding or encouraging abortions, and now Republicans want to kill it. Some protesters stormed Kevin McCarthy’s office today demanding that PEPFAR be funded. They were arrested, which is what often happens when you get rowdy in government buildings.
But while I agree with their cause, this is an example of stupid protesting. Kevin McCarthy has little control over the House and isn’t going to be swayed by protesters. The protests need to focus on educating the public about how stupid it would be to let PEPFAR lapse. Protests don’t work by yelling at the powers that be. They work by swaying public opinion.