What’s the rest of it? What did she grant and reserve? Is she just chipping away at the prosecution one slow cut at a time?
FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024
Not if Cannon said it couldn’t be.
In William Link v. Wabash Railroad Co., the Supreme Court stated that, in the federal court system, the District Courts have discretion as to whether they should dismiss with or without prejudice.
At least the way I’m interpreting that as a layman, it seems like Cannon not only had the power to dismiss, but to say it can’t be brought again to federal court.
I saw that in the news today. The cynical interpretation is that she’s doing just enough to avoid being recused, so that she can remain on the case and continue making favourable ruling for her orange master.
That assumes that there’s no unappealable way to dismiss, and it kinda sounds like there are…?
If a case is dismissed with prejudice, can the “with prejudice” part be appealed by the prosecutor? Seems to me that the answer should be “yes”.
After she denied Trump’s motion to dismiss, did he post on social media (in all caps) about what a horrible, biased, conflicted, Trump-hating judge she was?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
This surprises me not at all. Shocking, though.
Gift link:
From the article:
Shortly after Judge Aileen M. Cannon drew the assignment in June 2023 to oversee former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, two more experienced colleagues on the federal bench in Florida urged her to pass it up and hand it off to another jurist, according to two people briefed on the conversations.
The judges who approached Judge Cannon — including the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, Cecilia M. Altonaga — each asked her to consider whether it would be better if she were to decline the high-profile case, allowing it to go to another judge, the two people said.
But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wanted to keep the case and refused the judges’ entreaties. Her assignment raised eyebrows because she has scant trial experience and had previously shown unusual favor to Mr. Trump by intervening in a way that helped him in the criminal investigation that led to his indictment, only to be reversed in a sharply critical rebuke by a conservative appeals court panel.
Not surprising because Cannon is in the bag for Trump.
Shocking because judges almost never offer opinions to other judges about their concerns re performance on a case. But they did – understandably, in my view – offer such opinions here.
Evidence of her bias becomes more clear each day.
should she give an opening to team usa to appeal, it sounds like things could be very shaken.
I think I’ve said this before, but I think someone should be keeping a close eye on her spending, bank accounts and gifts. The judiciary seems to be frequently for sale these days.
“Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.”
–“The Godfather”
ProPublica has been killing it vis-a-vis SCOTUS. I’m hopeful that at least one of that team is keeping watch over Judge Cannon.
What’s it take to get statements from her bank or whatever?
Her salary would be public info, but other than that?
She is probably just a brown noser, but shit, who knows.
She deserves just as much scrutiny as Fani Willis. You know, appearances and all.
Sadly in the law she doesn’t. Willis isn’t a judge who is close to untouchable.
Ethically she does but we’re talking about the legal system. 
today’s hearing is on the legality of the special counsel. something that has been decided over, and over, and over.
Is she required to keep the case moving forward or is there some other reason this might actually go to trial before the election that she needs to delay it? It seems odd that she’s running the risk of being forced to recuse (not that we haven’t been told that about half the other stuff she’s done) when she likely already successfully got the case pushed far enough out.
If I were her, I’d think I’d be wary of getting greedy.
It’s about the stock market, but I always liked a phrase I picked up from Jim Cramer. Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered.
The consensus from the experts appears to be that it’s a combination of all the things.
There’s naturally the bias showing through but apparently she’s also very inexperienced and wary of making outright mistakes that would be overruled later, which creates delays. And apparently she just personally likes getting lost in the legal weeds and doing the legal equivalent of brain teasers, which induces its own delays. So, even in the best possible case where her natural bias is unintentionally showing through, her natural inclinations work against speedy work.
That’s above and beyond her personal working style, which reportedly is of the “yell at subordinates and wonder why they can’t do anything right” variety, which itself does not lend itself to reducing delays or keeping good clerks around.
I’m going to go ahead and disagree with the conventional wisdom on this a little bit. (Ok, a lot.)
First, we have many inexperienced judges who are handling cases much better than Cannon is doing. The (Trump-appointed) judge handling the Hunter Biden case is inexperienced. She is acting like a reasonable, normal judge. Inexperience is not an excuse to be a partisan wacko.
Second, inexperienced judges have lots of resources at their disposal to help them learn how to appropriately handle big important cases. Resources like an experienced chief judge who advises that perhaps this isn’t the best case for her to cut her teeth on, and who also points out that by keeping the case, she’s wasting significant taxpayer funds to build an unnecessary SCIF to review classified material, because a SCIF is already available in Miami, along with judges who are much better qualified to hear a case such as this. Which advice Cannon blithely ignored.
This is not the action of a judge who is “wary of making outright mistakes that would be overruled later.” Rather, it is the action of a judge so arrogant that she believes she knows better than all others. Including all her superiors.
Third, when a chief judge goes to the effort to pull an inexperienced judge aside to “advise” that they step away from a case, that’s not so much a friendly suggestion as something a sane inexperienced judge will heed without question. “We’re not really asking, honey.” Cannon didn’t care, and that’s very troubling.
Fourth, I have been around judges who have been reversed by an appeals court. They hate it. It’s embarrassing as hell. Their colleagues give them shit about it, and they will do everything they can to avoid such embarrassment a second time.
Remember the Special Master issue that Cannon handled before she was assigned this case? She was smacked hard over her poor rulings by the Eleventh Circuit not once, but twice.
A judge who is afraid of being overruled would be mortified by the dressing-down she received the first time – it wasn’t subtle – and pay heed to what the appeals court told her. Cannon didn’t. She basically flipped off the Eleventh and plowed ahead with her erroneous rulings a second time.
That’s when I knew there was something much more malevolent at work here than mere inexperience.
I understand the reluctance of many to pass harsh judgment on Cannon because of the shade it throws at our entire judicial system. It’s something I hate to see as much as anyone who was or is involved with that system and treasures our adherence to the rule of law in this country.
But in this case, it’s worth considering that the best spin we can put on Cannon’s nutty behavior is that she’s incompetent as hell. Doesn’t it seem like mere incompetence would benefit/disadvantage both sides equally? Funny how Cannon’s “incompetence” so consistently favors only one side.
About as perfect a summation on the worthless shithead as possible.
Thanks!
Most welcome, and it’s kind of you to say.
As I was taking a shower, one last point came to me that I meant to make:
This is a very serious case. It involves our national security interests and our role on the world stage as a trustworthy ally to other nations. Lives were very likely lost over obtaining the important information that Trump stole. Our national intelligence agencies aren’t going to trumpet the scope of what has been compromised, but I think it’s very safe to assume that a lot of pretty serious stuff was.
I think that a judge hearing any case that encompasses these concerns should have the nation’s best interests in mind above all else.
Instead, Cannon seems solely preoccupied with whether Trump is being treated “fairly.” She doesn’t seem to get the enormous stakes that are at issue here. I find this disqualifying of her on its face.
And the fact that this has been leaked to the press shows that there are colleagues who are outright hostile to Cannon.
I was one reluctant to believe that a federal judge wouldn’t be professional and competent.
But this woman is running a kangaroo court, and her performance as judge is an embarrassment to the profession (I believe I’ve said similarly about the nonsense in Georgia regarding a mini trial into the personal life of the prosecutor; these are absolutely ridiculous examples of court clusterfucks that should not happen).