I Might Cry

Goddammit, one right after the other. trump's getting the damn delays in his criminal trials he wanted.

First off, yesterday the trump-appointed judge overseeing the documents theft case in Mar-A-Lago decided to indefinitely delay the start of that trial until certain matters - matters she's muddled in the first place - are resolved (via Russell Lewis at NPR):

Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the federal bench when Trump was president, had originally set a trial start date of May 20. In a hearing on March 1, attorneys with special counsel Jack Smith's office urged Cannon not to delay the trial beyond July. Trump's legal team wanted the trial to start after the presidential election.

In a written order issued late Tuesday, Cannon said there are too many outstanding pre-trial motions and classified issues that need to be resolved — and said a trial date cannot be finalized. It is unlikely that the trial will now start before the November election...

Marcy Wheeler at her site goes into more detail how this happened:

...Trump nominated Judge Cannon on May 21, 2020. Judge Cannon’s order ceded to the requests of Trump and his co-defendants for hearings on all sorts of requests that, before any other judge, would be deemed frivolous. She adopted deadlines Trump asked for last year. The order undoubtedly delayed accountability in this case, with the next deadlines set for a month after the original trial date. And Trump is alleged to have stolen nuclear documents. In the original 15 boxes returned in January 2022, there were three documents classified FRD, for a total of 57 pages and charged document 19, which was seized on August 8, 2022, is also classified FRD, formerly restricted, a classification used for nuclear stockpiles and targeting. All would have been covered by the Presidential Records Act and so belong to the US Government; Trump could declassify none of them on his own...

The post is a good way to start thinking about the information economy that led us to a place where a Republican judge helps delay accountability for stealing nuclear documents and storing them in a closet normally storing campaign swag. This information economy creates an environment in which a former prosecutor like Aileen Cannon either believes, or claims to believe, outlandish claims of bias and ill-treatment solely because career national security officials — rebranded by Trump as the Deep State — did their job...

Wheeler highlights a number of social media wingnuts who threw out argument after argument against the legal system and our own national security people that Cannon could then use as excuses of her own to treat trump's situation differently than any other national security breach we've known:

And by feeding the rubes shamelessly false claims, Julie (Kelly) has become quite the celebrity, speaking at CPAC and regularly appearing on Steve Bannon’s show. Bannon knows a useful propagandist when he sees one!

Now, I’m not begrudging Julie the fame she has carefully cultivated with her shamelessness. She has earned it! The right wing propaganda network — the deliberate fostering of lies masterminded by people like accused fraudster Bannon — always rewards people who will tell the rubes what they want to hear.

What I’m trying to explain is how her role gives Aileen Cannon cover to do truly astonishing things, like entertain the notion that  putting a non-partisan in charge of the investigation of Trump for classified documents while putting a Trump appointee who had already deprived a Trump target of due process in charge of the Biden investigation is instead proof of selective prosecution against Trump.

In addition to that premise — that investigating Trump in the same way as investigating Biden is proof of selective prosecution against Trump — Aileen Cannon’s order yesterday and earlier orders signaled she is entertaining the following claims:

• That Walt Nauta, who doesn’t claim to have sorted through any documents, must have the ability to sort through classified documents
• That because the document investigation, which included crimes in DC, started in DC, and used DC SCIFs for the investigation, it’s proof that Jack Smith was deliberately attempting to bypass SDFL
• That because Mark Meadows and Pat Philbin got the White House involved in document response, it’s proof that Biden improperly intervened
• That even though multiple Trump-friendly witnesses testified that Trump didn’t even know Tom Fitton’s Clinton socks theory until 2022, he should be able to argue to jurors he applied it in 2021
• That because NARA informed DOJ about classified documents, the same way they did with Joe Biden, it’s proof that NARA are part of the prosecution team as opposed to the victim
• That because Trump’s surveillance system uses difficult software and one of the defense lawyers only uses an iPad, prosecutors have failed to meet discovery obligations
• That Trump has immunity to steal nuclear documents that he couldn’t even declassify on his own

These are all, individually and collectively, crazy. It’s unclear whether Cannon truly believes them or simply doesn’t care. She has chosen to treat Trump’s claims according to the reality his propaganda bubble has created rather than the actual facts before her...

Cannon could claim inexperience dealing with national security matters in the first place, but that ought to require her either recusing herself so a judge with that experience can take over, or for an appeals court to do that for her. Otherwise, this is just her finding not only opportunities to delay this trial, but any opportunity to dismiss these serious charges against trump.

This morning, news came out from Georgia that the Fulton County election fraud case got hit with a delay when the state's appeals court agreed to hear trump's argument to have DA Fani Willis removed from that prosecution (by Sam Gringlas at NPR):

The Georgia Court of Appeals has granted oral arguments after former President Donald Trump appealed a decision allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stay on the criminal case involving Trump and others.

The court's decision likely further diminishes chances that the Georgia election interference case goes to trial this year.

In March, Fulton Judge Scott McAfee allowed Willis to remain on the case — if the special prosecutor she had been in a romantic relationship with resigned. That special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, resigned.

Trump and other defendants who first raised allegations of a conflict of interest appealed McAfee's decision.

It seems unlikely the appellate judges will accept trump's argument, since the matter at the district level was resolved by that judge. But the way things are going, I don't have that optimism anymore, all my previous aspirations of justice being firm and swift are now gone. 

We're left with the status of the DC matter involving four felony charges on trump for his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection, and THAT could be overturned outright by five wingnut SCOTUS Justices looking for any excuse - even if it destroys the checks and balances of the Constitution itself - to get trump off the hook. If by the off-chance the Court rejects trump's claims of immunity - at least involving what happened that day - and does so within this month (or early June) then we could see Special Prosecutor Jack Smith getting a trial set up just as the Manhattan trial concludes.

I no longer have my hopes up for that though.

We'll get there when we get there, I guess.

In the meantime, for the millions of Americans who know full well the damage trump has done - and the damage trump threatens to inflict - need to get the damn vote out this November 2024 and stop trump - and the Republicans - from usurping our power and responsibility to vote at all.