Trump could always go for a Jacksonville plea bargain…
FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024
I could’ve lived the rest of my life without that visual…
Sounds like I should abstain from clicking the link, eh?
LOL, that’s my advice!
No pictures, just words. But oh, what words…
(Also: it’s a The Good Place reference, which is an awesome show nonetheless.)
I was under the impression that there were only a few judges with proper jurisdiction, and she was the worst of the bunch (going by lack of experience). But that info came out when she first got the case, and I can’t remember any details at this point. (It has been a while.)
More than you ever wanted to know about last Thursday’s hearing - lawfare article.
There is a lot of discussion re jury instructions during the hearing. Provides a good basis to understand the odd order re the jury instruction hypotheticals.
Cannon asks good questions, she asks dumb questions, she dismisses Trump lawyers, and she entertains their odd construction of the facts/caselaw.
Cannon will deny the PRA motion, but is hung up on Trump being the only President charged with this crime when Presidents have retained classified info and not been charged. So get ready for the selective and vindictive prosecution motion.
I know this is a particular sticking point with Trump supporters, but I don’t think the prosecution is going to have a hard time arguing the circumstances of this case are much different than it was for Biden or Mike Pence. I’ve tried explaining it to MAGAts, that Trump would not be in this situation had he returned the documents when asked, and unlike Pence or Biden, he lied to the government and his own lawyer about having them, attempted to prevent the government from finding them, and directed others to hide them. But MAGAts just double down and say, “Don’t care! They all had documents.”
Your analysis is the same as mine. But then the question is, what’s the line? Forgot obstruction, what’s the line for deciding to charge a President for the “retaining” documents crime?
DOJ concedes it’s a crime on Jan 21, 2021 (the day after he is not President) when Trump no longer has authority to have them - so in that sense, the Trump supporters are correct (“they all had documents”). But common sense says DOJ wouldn’t charge anyone for that crime, even though it’s a crime. That would actually look vindictive.
I think there is a grey area somewhere. And not just the length of time, but nature of docs etc.
I don’t think it’s this case at all. We are well past the line. Hopefully future Presidents will know compliance will not lead to charges, noncompliance will lead to charges.
They really have to argue that?
I agree with your argument. But I would have thought that selective prosecution is not a criminal defense. Is it?
That was an interesting read. Yes, I’m seeing the selective prosecution being teed up. The article does give a good look into her thinking.
No, it’s not. The same way you can’t defend your traffic ticket by saying “but what about the other drivers also going too fast?”, donald doesn’t get to defend against a criminal charge by arguing that others got away with it.
At least, not in any sane courtroom.
The legal defenses of selective and/or vindictive prosecution are real, but almost certainly not legit in this case. Prosecutors have wide, but not unlimited, discretion of who they charge and don’t charge.
So, if the cop was pulling over speeders, and the DA was only charging, say, Asian speeders, or female speeders, that is selective prosecution and a “defense” to the crime. Yes they committed the crime, but the DAs enforcement of the crime violates the constitution and they should not have been charged.
It gets to equal protection and due process. Or simply, it’s not fair to wield prosecutorial discretion in that way.
I’m not clear if the “selective” part must be constitutionally protected classes or not. For example, I don’t know if only charging people over 6’2 would be considered selective prosecution versus charging specific race, religion. sex, etc. I would imagine political affiliation would be protected. But I’m not sure about “Presidents”.
I also don’t know what it takes to prove any of this. I’d imagine even at the motion to dismiss stage the evidence must be fairly high. *which means Cannon, unfortunately, might allow an evidentiary hearing on this motion.
FYI…vindictive is separate and distinct. Vindictive is more charging someone when there’s no real evidence of a crime. Or purely in response to something they have a legal right to do, even if they did commit the crime.
**upon rereading my post above about only charging Trump and not other Presidents of the same conduct, that would be more selective than vindictive (even though Trump will argue both).
I remember the part about there being only 3 judges in the pool. I also already had an opinion about her based on the two smacks the Eleventh had previously given her in Trump’s stupid special master petition.
I also remember reading that of the 3 jury trials she had under her belt at the time, one of them was on appeal because she forgot to have the the panel of prospective jurors sworn in before commencing voir dire. (Derp.)
I think it’s worth highlighting that – to our knowledge – only Biden and Pence were even accused of having classified documents that they were not supposed to have.
And we’ve all fairly thoroughly hashed out the differences in how each handled their situation (and the Robert Hur Report wrt Biden, and the DoJ’s decision to close its Pence investigation without action).
I raise these again because … the RW claims about similar offenses committed by the likes of GW Bush and Barack Obama have always been – to use the legal term of art – complete bullshit fabricated out of whole cloth.
Selective prosecution will be a painfully high bar, particularly since – as I think I cited above – Trump’s refusal to return documents compelled the Archivist to refer the matter to the AG.
He stands glaringly alone in that regard.
But “when you ain’t got nothin’, you’ve got nothin’ to lose.”
ETA: maybe I didn’t cite this upthread (?):
In the event of potentially unlawful removal or destruction of government records, Title 44, Section 3106, of the U.S. Code requires the head of a federal agency to notify the Archivist, who initiates action with the Attorney General for the possible recovery of such records. The Archivist is not authorized to independently investigate removal or recover records.
ETA2: Okay. I did 
And this is worth pointing out again to those pretending to worry about how this might affect future Presidents. The government bent over backwards giving Trump multiple chances to comply with their requests, and only charged him after it was clear he had lied to them, and had no intention of ever fully complying. They clearly were not eager to charge him, and thus we can safely conclude that they won’t be eager to charge any future President, unless they’re as much of an asshole as Trump.
As much as the delays in all this annoy us, they do have the upside of proving that this isn’t all just a politically-motivated witch hunt. The courts are giving him every chance they can to defend himself, which is the exact opposite of a kangaroo court.
The keyword you used there was pretending. A few years back, I was speaking to my MAGA mother, and I mentioned one of the problems with political discourse today is that we’re living in entirely different realities. One of the problems with talking to MAGA supporters is that I don’t believe they’re arguing in good faith. As you said, they’re pretending to believe there’s not a difference between Trump and Biden/Pence when it comes to documents. It’s hard to engage with people who aren’t acting in good faith.
Wait, so if I’m caught speeding and running a red light, I can argue that I believed traffic laws didn’t apply if you were legitimately in a hurry? Is that how the law works, or does it only work that way for Trump?
They are acting in good faith…for their reality. Which is defined by “what they want to be true”. For many MAGAs the “assume whatever you want to be true is true and whatever you don’t want to be true isn’t” worldview isn’t deliberate lying; it’s how they genuinely think after decades of heavy gaslighting by right-wing media.
I’m not saying there aren’t plenty of folks involved who are deliberately lying, but for many it’s a cult and they’re so deep in the Flavor-Aid they need a long snorkel.
It’s called mens rea and I think it usually has to be established by the prosecution. Part of the whole “beyond a reasonable doubt” thing.
But I think it’ll be dla difficult road for Trump, since a lot of this is about Trump hiding documents after he was informed of the law. Plugging your ears and going ‘la la la no no no’ isn’t the same as lacking mens rea. There’s basically zero chance that he would have been prosecuted if he’d told the archives “oops!” and just handed everything over.
You could try taking your traffic ticket to court, but you’d be hard pressed to prove that you somehow passed your driving test without knowing about red lights.