A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Smith Didn’t Seek Removal Of Aileen Cannon
The timing was breathtaking.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s wholesale dismissal in July of the indictment of Donald Trump for hoarding national security information at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing efforts to retrieve the materials came on the Monday following the Saturday assassination attempt against the former president.
That Monday was also the first day of the GOP convention and the day that Trump announced JD Vance as his running mate.
You could be excused if you missed the Mar-a-Lago news that day.
Yesterday, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed his appeal brief with 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to have Cannon’s dismissal reversed. It is an airtight case for why his own appointment as special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the funding for his work were both lawful. It is also an understated but withering deconstruction of Cannon’s deeply flawed decision. The only real bit of news was what the brief didn’t contain: an explicit request that the appeals court remove Cannon from the case.
It is highly likely that Smith prevails at the appeals court, but that victory will not mask the fundamental systemic and institutional failures to hold Trump to account under the rule of law for his crimes in a timely way that halts Trump’s ongoing threat to national security, gives voters a clear picture of who they’re voting for in November, and bolsters public confidence in the ability of the judicial branch to properly function in a crisis.
It’s easy to blame Judge Cannon for this debacle, and she deserves all the scorn heaped on her, but no one judge should be able to wreak this much havoc in such an important case without recourse or accountability. While we properly vest considerable power in individual federal judges, the system has shown its limitations, weaknesses, and ineptitude when confronted with a case of this magnitude.
Looming over these failures is the prospect of Trump winning back the White House then ordering the Justice Department to dismisses the case against him, and as I’ve suggested before, abusing the powers of the presidency to hamstring the judicial branch in various other ways that will sideline it to his autocratic impulses, especially now that the Supreme Court has sanctified him with presidential immunity. To put it more simply, Trump represents an existential threat to the judiciary, too, though it collectively doesn’t seem to grasp the risk.
Former CIA lawyer Brian Greer took a back-of-the-napkin stab at when the Mar-a-Lago case is likely to go to trial. By his estimate, even assuming Trump loses in November, we’re not looking at a trial beginning until sometime in 2026 or even 2027, some five to six years after Trump’s alleged criminal conduct. You can quibble with the specific math, but no math realistically gets you to a timely trial.
I don’t begin to have all the answers for the reforms needed to hasten the administration of justice in cases with structural constitutional issues at stake while preserving individual rights and due process. But I do know that blaming one corrupt judge for our national plight lets the system off the hook.
Must Read
TPM’s Josh Kovensky: How MAGA Is Already Justifying The Use Of Military Force At Home If Trump Wins
The Man Who Will Do Anything For Trump
A stellar profile of Kash Patel, one of the worst of the worst Trump flunkies, in the new issue of The Atlantic.
The writer, Elaina Plott Calabro, posted a thread about the most eye-popping incident she uncovered in her reporting on Patel.
Give them both a look.
Yup …
The NYT takes note of the 5th Circuit’s status as the Trumpiest court in the land. It actually calls it the most conservative, which everyone agrees on, but that descriptor is seeming ever more antiquated and imprecise in the face of an radical right-wing judiciary that is anything but conservative in the classical or legal sense.
Federal Judge In Texas Blocks Biden Immigration Program
As expected, the complaint filed late last week by a coalition of red states seeking to block the Biden program creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens won an early victory when a federal judge in Texas ordered a temporary stay of the program.
2024 Ephemera
- NYT: “A Latino civil rights group is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into a series of raids conducted on Latino voting activists and political operatives as part of a sprawling voter fraud inquiry by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton.
- More than 200 disaffected Republican alums of George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney have endorsed Kamala Harris in an open letter published in USA Today.
- Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI) has endorsed Donald Trump.
UPDATE: Trump Assassination Attempt Probe
- Nine members of the House task force investigating the assassination attempt on former President Trump visited the scene of the crime Monday.
- Some of the wackiest GOP members of the House are conducting their own “parallel” investigation and held an event at the Heritage Foundation on Monday featuring a panel that included Blackwater founder Erik Prince and conservative radio host and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino.
- At least five Secret Service officials have been placed on administrative duties pending the outcome of the agency’s own internal investigation. Four of the five were based in the agency’s Pittsburgh office and one was part of Trump’s protective detail.
‘You Maniacs!’
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Kitty pic
h/t @hmcody
This is what happens after the Executive Branch is run as a criminal organization for 4 years. The barn need sweeping.
I clicked past C-SPAN last night and saw “Prince of Darkness” Eric Prince on the screen. I could not believe anyone would give that freak a platform, but realized it was a GQP effort to “investigate” the Trump assassination attempt.
I can’t wait to read the final report, most likely titled, “Marxist / Communist Democrat Mastermind’s Assassination Attempt on President Trump: The REAL Story.”
I won’t claim that “the system” doesn’t need some overhaul, but plenty of cases have been successfully prosecuted under it. I’d point out that the major failures in the docs case can be traced back at least as much to decision-making as anything inherent in the system.
ETA: This case demonstrates just how much a process can be abused by someone with significant legal resources and a judge squarely in his pocket. Perhaps the federal courts can be tweaked to eliminate some of the possibility to egregiously delay and a lower threshold can be set for removal of a judge from a case, but there’s only so much that can be codified before the system becomes stacked against less corrupt defendants.
I’d be curious to see the specific failures and remedies DK has in mind.
I really want to prank the astronauts as suggested.