Post New

In the latest court filings before judge Aileen Cannon concerning the classified documents case, the convicted felon and rapist has argued that the charges should be dropped on grounds that investigators failed to preserve evidence in the order in which they were found.

In a 33-page filing last night, documents marked “secret” and “top secret” or bearing the White House emblem are seen stuffed in cardboard boxes alongside piles of golf shirts, sitting on top of old newspapers, and next to crates of Diet Coke.

Smith’s team wrote that Trump “personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes along with a collection of other personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency – newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others.”

Documents were discovered spilling out on the floor from tipped-over boxes: “Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense, and, what’s more, that FBI agents executing the search warrant in August 2022 should have known that.”

Couple of points: Cannon has already seen this evidence and knows that Trump is going to be convicted if this case ever goes to trial (which is one of the reasons she's slow-dragging this until at least after the election). Trump has claimed that internal FBI emails suggested that the FBI long knew there was an issue with how the boxes were seized. In response, prosecutors revealed what the emails actually concerned: that a witness discovered additional classified material at Mar-a-Lago the day after the August 2022 search.

Me, I'm still waiting for Dope1 to write that Trump shouldn't be allowed to run for office and belongs, instead, in prison.

Yeah, I know: I ain't holding my breath.


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/...

cannon also judged that trump is not a risk because direct evidence of trump-related threats against the FBI specific to the search\'assassination attempt' was not presented at the time. so i guess a more general threat would be ok as free speech.

this fits in along the lines of the GOP where no mass shooting culprit can be PROVEN mentally unfit on gun possession, and enforced, until after the act is completed.

I'm thinking if the charges are dropped, they can be refiled, and we (hopefully) could get a judge who isn't a MAGA-head beholden to convicted felon Trump.

No?

The trial won't be before Nov anyway, so there's not really a time crunch.

The calculus involved here is extremely complex.

The prosecutor could withdraw the charges for now, let some time elapse, then attempt to re-file them. This poses several risks.

In theory, the charges still need to be filed in the district court serving the place where the crimes were committed which would still involve this district court which COULD mean that Cannon could still be randomly assigned the case... A SECOND TIME.

Given how the judicial process has been perverted to date, it is possible that district court could invent somem precedent that requires a case already subjected to litigation by Judge X in one round should be assigned back to that Judge X if charges are re-filed in another round to avoid "wasting time" with another judge coming up to speed.

There's more than a zero percent chance that dropping the charges, waiting some period of time, then re-filing charges could be viewed negatively by potential trial jurors, lowering the chance of a guilty verdict being rendered in a case in which a guilty verdict would normally be a no-brainer.

There is one other more existential risk to this case at the moment that prosecutors have to consider which has been discussed here before. At any point while current charges are pending, Cannon could invent some legal theory or rule from the bench about some aspect of the case and completely toss the charges WITH PREJUDICE. If she does that, the acts cited in the indictment become unusable in ANY future attempt at prosecution. That doesn't mean that if Cannon acts in such a way deemed to be entirely outside any justification of the law or trial procedure precedents that SHE cannot be held accountable via impeachment, etc. However, such a decision IN THIS CASE would be irreversable. Our system is so tilted towards the rights of a defendant that there are certain events that have no Ctrl-Z button when they favor the defendant. Having charges thrown out with prejudice by a judge hearing the case is one of those events.

As stated previously, I think this is why Jack Smith has not used information about the documents Trump shared in his office at his Bedminster golf club in this Florida case. If worse comes to worse, he has that single crime which clearly occured in another court district that is equally injurious to national security to prosecute if the Florida case is derailed.

--------------------------------

As it stands, Cannon is already light-years away from any bounds of normal jurisprudence in this case, with this hearing regarding claims that prosectors essentially "destroyed evidence" by not preserving the exact order and position of the documents retained illegally by the defendant. The nature of the national security document laws that were violated had nothing to do with keeping the documents "in order", by page number, by topic, by author or by whatever scheme Trump chose to use when taking them in the first place and storing them illegally. MERE POSESSION of the documents is the crime. The CONTINUED RETENTION of the same documents AFTER the National Archives REQUESTED their return is the crime. INTENTIONALLY misleading federal agents PRIOR to a search warrant and CONTINUING to mislead federal agents AFTER a search warrant about the location of all requested documents is the crime.

The argument posed by Trump's attorneys not only should have been rejected with a single word from the bench -- DENIED -- in ten seconds by Cannon, it should have resulted in fines to the lawyers for filing such a frivolous motion. Instead, the motion triggered multiple days of delay for a hearing to be held, burned nearly four hours of court time for the arguments to be made and STILL hasn't resulted in Cannon announcing a decision. All of which fits her modus operandi of leveraging the substitition of motion for progress as she "plays judge" by holding hearings on things having no legal merit as a means of delaying what should have been an open and shut case with virtually zero legal issues to resolve.


WTH

So don't give her the opportunity to dismiss the charges with prejudice. Drop them and refile.

I can't imagine that the prosecutors don't have recourse against the judge. They should be able to file a motion up her chain of command to have her removed for incompetence and/or judicial malpractice.

onepoorguy: I can't imagine that the prosecutors don't have recourse against the judge. They should be able to file a motion up her chain of command to have her removed for incompetence and/or judicial malpractice.

But they don't currently have any recourse (albaby1 should be the one commenting here but maybe he's on vacation or has just gotten tired of repeatedly explaining the law to morons). And there's no way "to have her removed for incompetence and/or judicial malpractice." Cannon can slow walk this trial to her heart's content. It's her courtroom.

Prosecutors may have an appeal available if she rules against them on the gag order but even if she is removed, that would almost certainly delay the trial until after the election.

We should have the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity this week which will either kill the Jan 6 trial or give it the green light. Big week for democracy.

We should have the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity this week which will either kill the Jan 6 trial or give it the green light. Big week for democracy.

My guess is it is on the side of no blanket immunity. If they were on the complete immunity side, just issue the opinion so we can all go about our business. But if they can't do that, the best the right wing majority can do is to slow walk the opinion by dragging their feet on the dissenting opinion. A quick opinion would have let the Jan 6 trial continue and possibly be decided before the election. By delaying the opinion, they've delayed the trial case sufficiently so that it cannot be decided before the election.

--Peter

Post New

US Policy FAQ

---

Contact Shrewd'm
Contact the developer of these message boards.