Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Wait, what?

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Be a wild strawberry.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

You are here: Home / Justice / Criminal Justice / Two Long Reads from Lawfare, Both Are Worth Your Time

Two Long Reads from Lawfare, Both Are Worth Your Time

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Lawfare annoys me at times, but these two articles are well worth reading.

A Justice Department Show of Force in the Mar-a-Lago Case

In this first article, Scott Anderson and Benjamin Wittes provide some of the information I have heard before, but with color commentary that’s very useful to a non-lawyer like me.

The Justice Department’s filing Tuesday evening in former President Trump’s federal court effort to slow the Mar-a-Lago investigation presents a remarkable show of strength and confidence in the ongoing probe.

The document’s legal arguments are not particularly engaging, as they respond to uninteresting, meritless legal challenges from the former president. Its factual summary, by contrast, is a rip-roaringly great read, one in which the department tells the story of its investigation in some detail. Some of this story it has told before, but some it has not. There are a lot of new details in here, and nearly all of them are bad for the former president.

Some of these flesh out the volume and nature of the classified material Trump hoarded at Mar-a-Lago. But other details, more importantly in our view, flesh out questions of intent and mens rea that are key to all of the statutes at issue in the warrant. While the document goes out of its way not to discuss Trump’s personal behavior, it also includes material specifically suggestive of the degree to which the department has collected material incriminating Trump personally.
…
Yet the story the department tells in the filing is not just about the highly sensitive nature of the documents. The document spends a great deal of time on the question of intent, which is key to all three statutes listed in the original search warrant.
…
The first conclusion from this extraordinary recitation is that the former president is in serious legal jeopardy. The department could have made all of the legal arguments that follow its factual account with a much more minimal factual presentation.

It chose to tell this story.

It chose to tell it in an open filing.

It chose to make a series of serious imputations about the manner in which the former president and his team had behaved.

It chose to include specific facts that suggest that Trump himself had engaged in misconduct.

And it chose to lay all this out in a fashion that will make the department look very foolish indeed if the investigation now comes to nothing. The Justice Department does not do bravado, as a general rule. For it to so confidently detail the history of its investigation and the interactions that have driven it suggests a high degree of confidence on where this is heading.

Read the whole thing.

A Mar-a-Lago Showdown in Federal Court

This second article is an interesting play-by-play description of how Thursday’s court proceeding unfolded.  Sort of live blogging, but after the fact.  Written by a third-year law student, but really well done, in my opinion.

This article is distressing to the extent that it really makes clear to me how desperately this judge is trying to find something, anything, that she can use to justify a Special Master.

Still, this isn’t the time to stick fingers in ears, saying “la la la I can’t hear you”, so I read the whole thing and I’m glad that I did.

It is 1:07 p.m. ET at the federal courthouse in Palm Beach, Florida, and it’s time for the first big courtroom showdown between former President Trump and federal prosecutors over the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.

Judge Aileen Cannon enters the courtroom, having already created something of a drama merely by taking Trump’s motion for a special master more seriously than a lot of commentators thought it warranted and stating in an order that she is inclined to appoint a special master. The Justice Department replied with a blistering brief, to which Trump’s team responded last night. And just like that, Trump’s team and the Justice Department lawyers are facing off before a judge Trump appointed and who received Senate confirmation even as the former president was contesting his election loss in a federal courthouse just a few miles from Trump’s own golf resort—which was itself the site of the search at issue in today’s hearing.
…
As Trusty strolls back to his table, Cannon announces that she won’t issue an oral order from the bench today. Instead, she says, the “court will be entering a written order in due course.”

And with that, we’re done for the day.

Again, read the whole thing; you’ll be glad you did.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  2. 2.

    Princess

    The first article helps explain why Barr hung Trump out to dry on FOX. He can read a DoJ filing as well as these people can, and obviously he has decided Trump is going down.

  5. 5.

    hueyplong

    @Princess: Barr knows most and maybe all of the bad shit that went down (he labored mightily to scam the public on the Mueller Report).

    He stopped one train but fairly apparently doesn’t think he could stop this one even if he wanted to (which he probably no longer does).

    He bears a huge responsibility for saving Trump back during the Muller process, but it’s really doubtful that he holds himself accountable in any way.  He probably sees it as “I saved the party back then but Trump learned nothing from his narrow escape and subsequently threw it all away.”

    His existence makes me want to believe in Hell.

  10. 10.

    Scout211

    From CNN yesterday, an article entitled, “Revelatory moments from the historic Mar-a-Lago special master hearing.”  (Note:  one of the reporters is Tierney Sneed, former TPM writer).

    What stood out to me was this:

    “Ultimately, what is the harm in the appointment of a special master to sort through these issues without creating undo delay, to do an orderly fashion, receive these materials, receive claims of privilege and go through it giving both sides a full opportunity?” Cannon asked [Julie] Edelstein.

    “I guess what I’m wondering from the Government, you know, is what is your articulation of harm other than just the general concern that it would delay a criminal investigation?” the judge continued.

    Edelstein responded: “First of all, those are very legitimate concerns; and, at the outset, even if there was an appropriate assertion of executive privilege, it is undisputed that the executive privilege is a qualified privilege.”

    Edelstein described “multiple very significant legitimate interests.”

    “One is the criminal investigation, and under Nixon v. United States, that is clearly recognized as a very significant interest, even if the materials had to be provided outside of the Executive Branch which here they don’t which shows how [limited] the intrusion is,” she said. “It would be unprecedented for the executive to be able to successfully assert privilege against the Executive Branch.”

    I could almost hear the unspoken question, “So Judge Cannon, do you want to be the federal judge who sets this precedent?

  12. 12.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Frankensteinbeck: releasing the inventory of items that included empty folders with various “Classified” markings didn’t strike me as helpful to trump’s side. I’m a dumb guy on the internet and that brought me up short

  13. 13.

    Ken

    @Hoodie: I’m surprised TFG hasn’t already tweeted a threat warning there will be violence if she doesn’t rule in his favor. He tried it with the DOJ.

    Maybe his lawyers figured out that they should not warn him against such behavior, since all the warning accomplishes is to get the idea rattling around in his head.

  15. 15.

    Geminid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yesterday’s release of the search inventory made the CBS radio hourly news last evening. Listeners heard that top secret documents were stored in boxes along with magazines and even articles of clothing.

  18. 18.

    New Deal democrat

    Thanks for providing the links.

    Two things jump out from the hearing summary:
    1. This judge really, *really* wants to appoint a special master.
    2. This judge really, *really* wants that special master’s authority to include issues of executive privilege.

    When Trump’s counsel omits the issue of executive privilege from his proposed scope of the special master, she guides him to include it. She disagrees with the government that Nixon settles the issue.

    She stays away from the Presidential Records Act, because it would deprive her of jurisdiction. And she is willing to carve out the issues of national security from any order.

    But I see her issuing a broad order, including executive privilege, and under a rubric of “extraordinary circumstances” and “equitable jurisdiction,” essentially placing herself in the role of “supervising judge” overseeing anything having to do with this search warrant. She will have to avoid relying on the PRA; avoid enjoining the government from taking certain actions (because that’s appealable); and finding that this case is sui generis for purposes of avoiding Nixon as controlling precedent.

    She clearly viewed this matter as an emergency last weekend. If she doesn’t issue her order by the end of this weekend, then she is clearly having trouble avoiding being fenced in by the government’s arguments.

  19. 19.

    MattF

    It’s noted here that all of the empty folders with classification markings were found in Trump’s office, rather than in the ‘storage area’. Hmmm.

  20. 20.

    Barbara

    @New Deal democrat: The issue of executive privilege is a legal issue, nor one that is decided by a special master. It is stipulated that there are presidential records. It’s her job to decide whether there is some kind of privilege that (a) inheres against other executive departments and/or (b) is personal to and can be asserted by a former president. A special master has no special expertise to answer those questions. My guess is that she doesn’t want to rule on that issue because it’s a slam dunk reversal. In other words,  she’s corrupt.

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    It is beyond obvious that Trump himself should have been arrested a long time ago. The untold story is the massive efforts being expended behind the scenes to protect Trump by trying to find friendly judges willing to delay matters despite the shambolic efforts of Trump’s attorneys.

    Some amount of the material the government is looking for is hiding in plain sight as memorabilia and knick knacks in various Trump clubs and other properties. Trump’s plans for exploiting this stuff is typically small minded grift.

    It is also likely that some of this classified material has been given or sold to foreign powers by designated Trump flunkies. It is now a question of identifying these individuals.

  24. 24.

    Anonymous At Work

    I think the judge might have an inkling that appointing a special master will result in an appeal, for which the DoJ will reveal even MORE damning evidence against her nominal sugar-daddy TFG.  However, she might also be feeling pressure to submit kowtow diaper-change give TFG what he thinks he wants in return for an appointment to Circuit Court of Appeals.

  25. 25.

    burnspbesq

    @Barbara:

    There is recent appellate authority (involving Trump) that pretty clearly establishes that executive privilege belongs to the current President, and it is hard to imagine Biden not waiving it under the circumstances.

  26. 26.

    Tony G

    @Hoodie: She’s a woman who apparently not a complete today to Dear Leader Trump.  Of course she’s getting death threats (and, most likely rape threats).  Trump cultists are generally fat, lazy cowards though, so maybe nothing to take too seriously.

  27. 27.

    SeattleDem

    I keep circling back to the question of what happened to the tape of the Ukraine call and other items improperly stashed in the top secret servers and wondering if the transcripts of those are now just empty folders. I assume the folders have identifying document numbers, so a cross reference would tell what was missing.

  28. 28.

    New Deal democrat

    @Barbara: “My guess is that she doesn’t want to rule on that issue because it’s a slam dunk reversal.”

    My guess is that, even as you and I exchange these comments, she is working on an opinion that appoints a special master with wide authority, that tries to sidestep the issue you raise, and has just enough art to be upheld by a Federalist panel of the appellate court.

  30. 30.

    TriassicSands

    But before it takes a step as controversial as indicting a former president…

    Why is indicting a former president, who is a criminal,¹ “controversial,” unless presidents and former presidents are above the law. As I read through the first piece, it struck me that the standard is not “beyond a reasonable doubt” for Trump. It is beyond any possible doubt whatsoever. That effectively places him above the law. I imagine that Trump’s universal dishonesty could not be pointed out in a trial — the fact that he knowingly and even admittedly lies, essentially about anything and everything if it suits his purposes, would be, what, prejudicial?

    Through timidity, cowardice, and stupidity, we’ve done this to ourselves. We’ve made our presidents into emperors, but without the possibility of penalties for criminality. Former kings and emperors even faced the possibility of execution. Among the worst decisions ever made by an American president was Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Nixon should have been indicted, tried, convicted, and served serious prison time. Perhaps, our presidents would be better behaved if that had been done.

    ¹ No, he’s not officially a criminal until convicted. But in Trump’s case, the criminality is so obvious…. What isn’t obvious is why we’ve made our presidents and former presidents into royals.

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    Is the 3rd year law student calling MaL a “golf resort”? Because, AFAIK, Doral hasn’t been searched by the FBI…

    Not getting simple details like this correct bothers me. Like seeing a white dog hair on a black wool suit.

    [ eye-twitch ]

    Thanks for the pointers, WG.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    Amir Khalid

    @Tony G:

    Trump cultists are generally fat, lazy cowards though, so maybe nothing to take too seriously.

    I have to disagree. Threats of rape and murder are always a deadly serious matter, even if frivolously made, and must always be treated as deadly serious.

  33. 33.

    TriassicSands

    @Anonymous At Work:

    If the judge rules for Trump, she may be looking for yet another appointment, this time to the Appeals level if, Trump is re-elected in 2024.

    Trump rewards those who serve. Until they are no longer useful.

    The legal consensus seems to be that the grounds for the appointment of a Special Master don’t really exist. The fact that she’s seriously considering it makes me wonder about her integrity. That and the person who appointed her to her present position.

  34. 34.

    KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))

    @hueyplong:

    He probably sees it as “I saved the party back then but Trump learned nothing from his narrow escape and subsequently threw it all away.”

    He doesn’t think Trump can get elected again with all the shit coming his way (it’s hard to campaign from prison. And yes, this is hyperbole, but not by much) and he wants the next president to be Republican.

    His existence makes me want to believe in Hell.

    Me too, huey. Me too.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    @SeattleDem:

    I keep circling back to the question of what happened to the tape of the Ukraine call and other items improperly stashed in the top secret servers and wondering if the transcripts of those are now just empty folders. I assume the folders have identifying document numbers, so a cross reference would tell what was missing.

    I feel absolutely certain that the folks who sounded the alarm about the missing documents know exactly what was checked out, by whom, on what day.

    They know this about every single document.

    Now they are matching up the documents and/or folders that were found during the search against the items that are missing.

    THEY WILL KNOW.  And anyone who got even a single missing document for Trump will soon have someone knocking on their door.

  38. 38.

    Obvious Russian Troll

    @Another Scott:

    Don’t wear your black wool suit to my house. No dogs, but we have a very affectionate white cat who loves formal wear.

    (For those of you who want to wear white, we have a much less affectionate black cat who sheds like you would not believe.)

  41. 41.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    As I understand it, those folders all have identifying information on them, showing what was in them. Someone checks them out from secure storage, signing for them. So the powers that be (I’m unclear here) know what is checked out, what is missing from folders, and who is responsible for those folders.

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: She should have just called it a supper club!

    I wonder why you would pick on her for calling it a golf resort when every single fucking member of the news media also uses a descriptor that is also incorrect.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    The good thing about the timing is that we should get a Supreme Court decision on a stay before the November election.  Hopefully, our voters will respond as they should.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @Barbara:

    Do you mean if she rules for SFB having executive privilege she’s corrupt?

    Just trying to clarify, because it seems pretty clear to this non lawyer (Who did long ago help a friend study for the CA bar exam and got more answers correct than he did, and he’d been to law school and has been a lawyer for decades now)….

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud:  If you had to choose “yes, she will call for a Special Master” or “no, she will not call for a Special Master”, what would your prediction be.

    *Stipulating that it’s hard to make predictions, particularly about the future.

  49. 49.

    Ken

    @Anonymous At Work: the DoJ will reveal even MORE damning evidence against TFG.

    “Plaintiff asserts executive privileges, which he no longer has (list of citations). Further, even the current executive is not permitted to declassify or share documents with the security notation XYZ.

    “As the attached photographs from Mar-a-Lago security cameras show, in May of 2022 Plantiff showed documents with the security notation XYZ to members of the Greenwood-Halstead marriage party, and allowed those persons to take photographs of the documents.

    “Subsequently three members of the wedding party were identified as agents of foreign intelligence services…”

  51. 51.

    Carlo Graziani

    @TriassicSands: This is the thing that says “not too bright” to me. A brand-new Federal District Court judge has a lifetime appointment, which is an opportunity to build a reputation among her or his peers, among attorneys, and among legal scholars, as a jurist of professional competence, insight, even brilliance. This reputation generally matters more for advancement than political connections (ok, I do know about the Federalist society, but it is possible to be evil and brilliant).

    To take this kind of reputational risk for the sake of slowing down the big hammer heading for Trump on the off-chance that he might be re-elected in 2024 is a high-stakes gambler move. Trump isn’t going to be on the national stage much longer anyway, just based on actuarial tables. Betting that right-wing gratitude for her minor delaying action will outweigh the disdain in the legal profession for the bad odor produced by her conduct doesn’t strike me as smart. There is politics, but there is also professional pride.

  53. 53.

    Chris Johnson

    @Ken: The reason all of this is so awkward and takes so long is that it leads toward,

    “the former President of the United States was identified as an agent of a foreign intelligence service”

    and that is so totally messy and awkward for so many people that it’s hard to even quantify. People trusted this guy to get them what they wanted. A lot of Republicans were in on it, and a lot of Republicans were betrayed, and a lot were in that gray area where they basically knew but were getting what they wanted.

    You cannot simply execute a third of the country for treason, so unwinding all of this takes time, and some of the collaborators have to be let go and never trusted again. It’s sort of post WWII Germany. It’ll be an ongoing problem. Will probably make the country stronger, but it’s a painful and grueling process.

  54. 54.

    livewyre

    @Carlo Graziani: Bearing in mind the apparent goal of the Federalist Society of breaking law (not breaking the law, breaking law), it seems possible to me that one sufficiently zealous could be shooting the moon in favor of advancing before the election – or without an election. Banking on reinstatement by force, in other words.

    Zeal doesn’t acknowledge probability (or even reputation, to some extent, except among designated peers). How likely is that to be the foremost motivation, out here where probability matters? No idea.

  55. 55.

    J R in WV

    Watergirl, thanks so much for posting these links!

    So much to read, so heartening for our cause!! TFG may have stepped into a very deep hole of his own making with this activity. His minions also appear to have risked years behind bars, perhaps in the same cage where Reality Winner spent her years of sentence for one document.

    Let’s see, 5 years for one document, times 90+ documents… how many decades does that compute to?

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @Barbara:

    OK we are on the same page. We may say it different, but as I recall  you are a practicing attorney and have a clear idea of the issues.

    I was just asking for my own language skills issues….

    To me this case seems pretty cut and dried, but then I’m not looking for it to go SFB’s way in the least. My take is that the government departments involved actually know and understand the law, how it’s normally administered, and how this should go and would go if not for the politics and characters involved.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl: 1) I didn’t know it was a she – I haven’t read the link yet.  B) I had the same criticism of a link in one of MM’s (IIRC) threads a day or few ago. iii) We can’t pick our triggers and neuroseses.

    ;-)

    I mean, it’s not that hard to get it right. Even “Jowly Roy Cohn” got it right:

    Bill Barr: "I think the driver on this from the beginning was loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago. People say this was unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, ok!" pic.twitter.com/A7fT59aKpD

    — Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 2, 2022

    (via Liz Dye at Wonkette.)

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  60. 60.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @J R in WV:

    Let’s see, 5 years for one document, times 90+ documents… how many decades does that compute to?

    Well, at a minimum, 450 years/45 decades. That’s a long time. In 1572 (450 years ago), Elizabeth I of England was on the throne, with still 30+ years to go in her reign. In 1572, William Shakespeare was eight years old.

  62. 62.

    New Deal democrat

    A broader point: one thing it may actually be harder for practicing attorneys to grasp – because of their trained reverence for high court decisions – compared with other people, is just how corrosive and destabilizing an effect the Supreme Court decisions on abortion, guns, and free exercise vs. establishment of religion have had on the whole fabric of law and the judiciary.

    if decades of clearly established precedent, if laws that have gone without challenge for a century, on a spectrum of issues, can be cavalierly tossed aside, then why should any judge or any potential litigant give weight to any of the others they disagree with?

    Even worse than Dobbs may have been the establishment case, where even though the dissent published the actual picture of the event, the majority simply lied baldfaced about the facts. That was the majority saying that the actual demonstrable truth doesn’t matter, if it gets in the way of our preferred agenda.

    This week we’ve seen a religious school go running directly to the federal judiciary to appeal a lower state court ruling. Way out of line, based on several centuries of precedent. So what? Why shouldn’t they?

    So  you say Nixon and decades of precedent control executive privilege. If it’s inconvenient, so what?

    Where precedent means nothing, the courts themselves are lawless.

  63. 63.

    RaflW

    I’m way out over my skis here, but couldn’t DOJ have argued for a change of venue when Fpotus filed? He was obviously judge shopping and well past the nearest relevant court.

  64. 64.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Read the first one, only got about 2/3 of the way through the second one as I was getting angry at Judge Cannon’s obvious leaning. It sounds as if she’s pre-decided not only to appoint the special master, but to agree that he (TFG) can make a claim to ownership of classified documents. Am I wrong?

  65. 65.

    RSA

    @TriassicSands: Why is indicting a former president, who is a criminal, “controversial,” unless presidents and former presidents are above the law.

    And I thought conservatives were against the idea of “special rights.”

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: It really seems like she is looking for a way to do that, but I am hoping she sees a dead end on that every which way she looks at it.  And that she takes so long to make her ruling that the DOJ and the IC have the time to get all the info they need.

    I am so tired of corrupt judges.

  71. 71.

    RaflW

    @WaterGirl: But will the tractor marks from the photo copier feeder show up?

    Because I don’t for a second think someone in Fpotus’ orbit wouldn’t have thought of making paper or digital copies.

    It’s a breech of such monumental proportions. And we now know that the near-entirety of the GOP is stone cold lying, daily, about anything concerning national security. They don’t care about natsec. They cannot, if they tolerate this gaping hole in keeping secrets secret.

  73. 73.

    eachother

    @Princess:  Comment #2- Yup.
    Looked glaringly obvious in a Fox and henhouse kind if way.
    Puddy cat, slouch and jowls Barr with a couple of feathers sticking  out the other side of his mouth, from which he speaks.

  75. 75.

    jsrtheta

    @Another Scott:

    The  nearest Trump gold club is in West Palm Beach, just a few miles from Mar-a-Lago, which is not, and never has been, a golf club. (Much too small.)

  76. 76.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Amir Khalid:I have to disagree. Threats of rape and murder are always a deadly serious matter, even if frivolously made, and must always be treated as deadly serious.

    What he said, sure the MAGA hats are all fat, cowardly and lazy, but they are also trying to egg some lone nut to go do it.

  77. 77.

    RaflW

    @New Deal democrat: if decades of clearly established precedent, if laws that have gone without challenge for a century, on a spectrum of issues, can be cavalierly tossed aside, then why should any judge or any potential litigant give weight to any of the others they disagree with?

    I’ve been saying roughly this for a while now about all the ‘but mah taxes!’ businesses that helped fund Trump and all the trumpist Republicans now in office: They’re rolling some very serious dice in terms of what a corrupt judiciary may choose to do to them, too.

    Mostly I mean that judges can capriciously rule on torts in unexpected ways, screwing businesses if they just feel like it, and given the corroded nature of the courts, will businesses have much reliable recourse moving up the appeals process? Crapshoot!

    But also if a business finds itself facing some minor legal infraction. Again, crapshoot as to wether the judges will be impartial or follow precedent.

  78. 78.

    jsrtheta

    This judge is in way over her head.

    And this should have been handed off to Reinhart. He’s the one who signed the warrant and knows the facts. If anyone else had pulled this stunt of failing to file it with Reinhart, they’d have been laughed out of the courtroom.

  80. 80.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @RaflW: If I was whoever runs the intelligence community, I’d assume that ALL of those docs have been made public and I was going to have to start over building my sources.

    TFG has done incalculable harm to this country. These docs are one more example.

  82. 82.

    Nora

    I agree that not enough people have really seen what damage this Supreme Court has done to the very concept of the rule of law. Once you say, in so many words, this 49 year old precedent on which people have been relying is overturned because we don’t like it, there is no basis for assuming anything about any future case. Stare Decisis is dead, precedent is dead. There’s no point in learning the law because the law itself has been turned into a game of “guess which prejudices your judge is going to have.”

    Horrifying as Dobbs is for all people who can get pregnant, and for those who care about them, its effect on the rule of law is even worse.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    Anecdotes are not data, but wow. VVP’s air force cannot even match what the USAF could do 23 years ago…

    Results of a USAF precision attack on a Serbian airbase in 1999 vs a Russian attack in February 2022 on the Ukrainian Air Force's Ozerne Air Base, home of the 39th Tactical Aviation Brigade equipped with Su-27s pic.twitter.com/fOlk3WKQMr

    — Vodka 🧊 (@vodk_anon) September 3, 2022

    (via Oryx)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  85. 85.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Nora:

    There’s no point in learning the law because the law itself has been turned into a game of “guess which prejudices your judge is going to have.”

    Courtroom Calvinball.

  87. 87.

    Another Scott

    @jsrtheta: +1

    My recollection is that Nixon got a lot of deference on his legal filings, but the courts followed the rules and the law and he eventually had to comply.

    This process is going to take some time, but the courts must ultimately go by the rules and the book or they will suffer consequences (Fight for 15, etc.).  She needs to tread carefully if she wants to make crap up to justify helping Grandpa Klepto. National Security isn’t her thing and she should recognize that.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @Another Scott:

    This process is going to take some time, but the courts must ultimately go by the rules and the book or they will suffer consequences …

    The goal for Trump’s team, and any corrupt judges trying to help him, is to make it last as long as possible – until a Republican administration, or Trump himself, can pardon him or call off the investigation.

  92. 92.

    piratedan

    my question would be, if the FBI has published the fact that 45 had documents in an unsecured location in violation of the PRA, there’s chain of evidence proof of that fact, just file an indictment.

     

    All of this dancing around and procedural kibuki just to allow this judge shopping POS to use the system one more time is tiresome.  Fuck it all, file it in DC and indict his ass.

  93. 93.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @RaflW: ​

    But will the tractor marks from the photo copier feeder show up?

    Because I don’t for a second think someone in Fpotus’ orbit wouldn’t have thought of making paper or digital copies.

    Why use a copier when it’s easier to take a picture with your phone, and easier to hide an encrypted MicroSD than a stack of copied classified documents?

  94. 94.

    Villago Delenda Est

    After Cannon is removed from the bench for gross violation of her oath and her duties, she should be disbarred, and then she should be indicted as a co-conspirator with TFG in treason.

  95. 95.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Nora: The Federalist Society needs to be annihilated.  They hate the Constitution, the Enlightenment from which it sprang, and furthermore want to basically bring back feudalism.

  99. 99.

    WaterGirl

    @zhena gogolia: There hasn’t been a ruling or an announcement, if that’s what you are wondering.

    Just reading the details of the articles above, particularly the second one, is enough to engender a comment like that.

  101. 101.

    hueyplong

    Don’t get excited about the prospect of removing this judge, no matter how bad she is.  Hardly any fed judges have faced impeachment in US history (lucky me, I had a case before one of them).

  105. 105.

    Wanderer

    Thanks for calling attention to the articles.  A very worthwhile read.  Very thoughtful and interesting comments as well.

  107. 107.

    Geminid

    @piratedan: There is a lot more going in this case than the motion for a special master. Just now I learned from @BenCisco’s excellent Twitter feed of an NBC news report that a Russian oligarch is being investigated by the FBI for possibly possessing some of the missing documents. There are many other leads for investigators to follow and I think they are even if it’s not making news.

    A DC grand jury under the authority of U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell has responsibility in this matter. I want to see indictments, but not until it has gotten to the bottom of this matter, and developed evidence sufficient to nab all of trump’s co-conspirators, and demonstrate trump’s complicity with them. If that takes six weeks or six months, so be it. As my late friend Chris would say, it’ll be good when I get it.

    I’ve seen people say that we need an indictment before the midterms, because that will move a lot of votes. But I doubt very much that it would. It might make some people happy, but in a couple days they’ll probably be pissed off again about something else.

  109. 109.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Geminid: Ah. Possibly, then, the idea that DOJ’s failure to unredact the Mueller Report might indicate the continuous existence of an FBI counterintelligence investigation against Russia connected to figures around Trump is not crazy.

    What if the MAL search followed from FBI CI surveillance of a Russian target?

  110. 110.

    WaterGirl

    @Geminid: I saw a report about the Russian Oligarch and wondered, but what I read didn’t talk about possible possession of some missing documents.

    Do you have the link you are referring to?

    It really does get worse.

    The more you know…

  111. 111.

    Scout211

    @Geminid: Are you talking about this report?

    Are you saying this is being linked to Trump’s case? I haven’t seen that reported anywhere. Do you have a link?

    Federal agents were seen on Thursday morning searching an apartment in a Manhattan high-rise and an estate in the Hamptons that authorities allege are connected to a Russian oligarch who recently had his yacht seized, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and FBI agents along with NYPD detectives were seen carrying boxes during a search of 19 Duck Pond Lane in Southampton, N.Y., and the search of 515 Park Ave. in Manhattan. Records show those properties are linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, a billionaire and close ally of President Vladimir Putin who heads the Moscow-based Renova Group, a conglomerate with interests in the metals, mining, and tech industries, according to U.S. Treasury Department documents.

    A search is also underway at a property on Miami’s Fisher Island that authorities say was linked to Vekselberg, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    . . .

    Vekselberg has long had ties to the U.S., including a green card he once held and homes in New York and Connecticut. He was also questioned in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

  112. 112.

    MisterDancer

    @Scout211:Agreed. Cisco’s tweet provides no link, just references NBC News’ Twitter, which doesn’t even cover this story; you have to go to their full website and search to find the article.

    A skim of Cisco’s Twitter…um. Yeah, not a lot of follow-up on his tweets, from the last 30 or so in his timeline.

  113. 113.

    Bill Arnold

    @Carlo Graziani:

    Possibly, then, the idea that DOJ’s failure to unredact the Mueller Report might indicate the continuous existence of an FBI counterintelligence investigation against Russia connected to figures around Trump is not crazy.

    I am fairly sure that there are long-continuing counter-intelligence investigations related to Mueller-report loose ends, perhaps related to Roger Stone and one or more of the adult Trump children (& spouses), and to DJT himself.
    As you suggest, if they exist, then annoyed/obsessed investigators will not hesitate to follow any leads generated by any new evidence, and there would have been extra counter-intelligence attention paid to DJT’s activities, especially after he left office.
    There are (or appear to be, from reports) a lot of now-missing classified documents that were taken by D.J. Trump. I see little reason to believe that he is not a traitor.

  114. 114.

    prostratedragon

    @RaflW:  No idea what they might have done, but DOJ did reference the fact that the petition was filed out of the jurisdiction that granted the warrant, in their original reply I think. So for whatever reason, definitely not just overlooked.

  116. 116.

    Geminid

    @MisterDancer: Mr. Cisco retweeted someone claiming that the FBI had searched Vekselburg’s home looking for the documents in question. Later the person admitted that he was only inferring that yesterday’s searches of Vekselburg’s residences in NYC and the Fisher’s Island in south Florida were related to the trump investigation, so I said the search was “possibly” for the documents. If people thought I was expressing a certainty I’m sorry.

    I’ll still stand by the  point I was making, that there is a lot to this story that we don’t know and that the grand jury is trying to develop, and that a thorough set of indictments is better than a quick one.

  118. 118.

    James E Powell

    @Carlo Graziani:

    That’s the kind of thinking I was doing before Bush v. Gore came down. I don’t want to bother predicting what this particular right-wing hack will do, but I expect it will be awful. The motion is bullshit & there is no need for any special master.

    If there is one thing we know about right-wingers it is that they do not give a rat’s ass about their reputation among non-right-wingers. Plenty of federal district judges have poor reputations among members of the bar. So what? They’re still federal judges, serving for life if they want to, making almost a quarter mil doing nothing but growing more pompous with each passing year.

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I would add that Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg contributed enough to trump’s inaugural commitee to qualify for a special candle light dinner with the President-elect. Before that, he attended the infamous 2015 Russia Today dinner with fellow guests Michael Flynn, Jill Stein and Mr. Putin, who is said to be an ally of Vekselberg.

    These events, plus a $500,000 payment to trump lawyer Michael Cohen detailed in the Muellar report, are probably why the person retweeted by Mr. Cisco speculated that the FBI searches of Vekselberg’s properties were related to the documents trump took from the White House.

    But they admittedly were jumping to the conclusion and I should have pointed that out. The FBI has only said that the searches were not related to a banking fraud matter Vekselberg is implicated in.

  121. 121.

    James E Powell

    @RaflW:

    My understanding is that UK intelligence never trusted our people. Of course, I’m basing that entirely on John le Carré novels.

  122. 122.

    Kirk Spencer

    @James E Powell: to be fair, successful intelligence agencies don’t trust anyone, not even them themselves. They work under the assumption that shared secrets will escape; it’s just a question of when. All the work of classification and restriction of access is meant to buy time — ideally so much time that by the time the wrong person knows it and shares it the secretno longer matters.

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