The 3 Worst Aspects Of Aileen Cannon’s Latest Shenanigan

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Come On, Aileen

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon confounded legal experts with her latest ruling, denying Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago indictment on a crackpot theory based on the Presidential Records Act.

In so doing, Cannon didn’t put the issue to bed, the way you would expect most judges to. Instead she very narrowly ruled against Trump in a skimpy ruling of barely three pages while leaving the door open for him to raise the issue later at trial in a way that could doom the prosecution.

Here’s what I found most concerning:

  • Cannon called the Mar-a-Lago case a “complex case of first impression.” It is neither. It is historically significant because it involves a former president. But legally, the case is not particularly remarkable. Trump’s nonsensical defenses don’t magically turn a relatively straightforward legal matter into a complex or unprecedented puzzle for her to solve. But her treating it as complex and without legal precedent provides an intellectually dishonest framework for all kinds of potential mischief that goes well beyond this one argument over the Presidential Records Act. Cannon can mess this case up in dozens of different ways with that kind of justification.
  • Cannon was defensive. It’s never good when a judge is in a defensive crouch over their judicial skills, the law, or their handling of a case. Cannon’s terse and lightly reasoned ruling came one day after Special Counsel Jack Smith raked her over the coals about her handling of Trump’s attempted use of the Presidential Records Act as a defense. In her ruling, she lashed back at him, mischaracterizing his position on the issue and then deriding it as “unprecedented and unjust.”
  • Cannon didn’t bury Trump’s Presidential Records Act argument for good. Trump’s argument is the kind we often see judges dispense with categorically before trial in order to streamline arguments, eliminate distractions, and keep the case focused and on track. Cannon was not decisive here, giving Trump the chance to raise the PRA defense later, perhaps after a jury has been seated and jeopardy has attached, meaning Smith would have no avenue for appeal. Despite all the commentary you may be seeing, there is no obvious or surefire way for Smith to get around her on this. Risks abound, as does uncertainty.

After every Aileen Cannon post I write, I get lots of questions about why Jack Smith isn’t moving to have her recused, taking her up on appeal already, or doing something else to dislodge her. I can assure you this is highly unusual conduct by a judge in a criminal case, and there are no easy answers here, either legally or practically.

Trump Loses Bid To Dismiss Georgia RICO Case

State Judge Scott McAfee denied Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss his Georgia indictment on spurious First Amendment grounds.

I’m No Saul Goodman!

Despite raising the “I’m no Saul Goodman!” defense, Trump DOJ official Jeff Clark moved one step closer to being disbarred in DC for his participation in the scheme to overturn the 2020 election.

More Please

Arizona Republican Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs have each been subpoenaed in the fake electors criminal probe being conducted by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, Politico reports.

The Chair Recognizes The Gentleman From Conspiracyland

In a piece taking a close look at the wild Jan. 6 conspiracies being promoted by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), the NYT captures the current moment: “[Mo]re than three years after the attack, right-wing Republicans at every level continue to spread falsehoods about what happened on Jan. 6 and are now seeking to use those lies as a rallying cry to denounce the government, promote Mr. Trump’s candidacy and rile up his supporters.”

Quote Of The Week

January 6 must not become a precedent for further violence against political opponents or governmental institutions. This is not normal. This cannot become normal. We as a community, we as a society, we as a country cannot condone the normalization of the January 6 Capitol riot.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Washington, D.C., an 80-year-old Reagan-appointee who is taking the unusual step of mailing his sentencing statement for a Jan. 6 rioter to nearly two dozen of the defendant’s supporters.

About That Trump Appeal Bond …

Trump’s $175 million appeal bond in the New York civil fraud case may not be sufficient under state law, and Attorney General Letitia James is asking questions.

You Don’t Always Get To Pick Your Battles Or Your Allies

The biggest mind-fuck of the last quarter century in American politics is how the Republican Party’s descent into Trumpian madness has created the unlikeliest of allies in the fight to save democracy:

The Terrible Smearing Of Adeel Abdullah Mangi

Lydia Polgreen: Three Democratic Senators Are Stuck Indulging an Outdated Fantasy

An Important Data Point

The Alabama hospital at the center of the IVF legal battle there will discontinue providing IVF services at the end of this year, which at least partly answers a question floating around for the past few weeks: Was the law passed by Alabama’s legislature to protect IVF from the state Supreme Court decision that frozen embryos are legally considered children sufficient to undo the damage wrought by that ruling?

The Mobile hospital discontinuing IVF attributed the decision to “pending litigation and the lack of clarity of the recently passed I.V.F. legislation in the state of Alabama.”

2024 Ephemera

  • Aaron Blake: Why Trump wants to game Nebraska’s electoral vote, mapped
  • Politico: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. disavows a fundraising email describing Jan. 6 rioters as “activists.”
  • WSJ: No Labels abandons its effort to field a third-party candidate for president.

Biden Calls For ‘Immediate Ceasefire’ In Gaza

TPM’s Josh Marshall: “The killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers has over the last two days triggered a wholesale shift across the U.S. political spectrum.”

The Bulwark Of Democracy

Heather Cox Richardson on the 75th anniversary of NATO.

It’s ‘Country’ If I Say It Is

Could anything be in Tressie McMillan Cottom’s wheelhouse more than Beyoncé’s new country music album?

“Big Country — the Nashville-controlled, pop-folk music that commodifies rural American fantasies — is the cultural arm of white grievance politics,” she writes in an extended essay on the musical genre, race and gender, and history and power.

Read it, then check out her Spotify playlist, which covers a lot of very good ground. I’ve been mainlining for a while her combo of classic hits and new stuff, or at least new-to-me stuff. Her playful (yet not) tagline for it is: “Good music is in the liminal spaces between genres. It’s ‘country’ if I say it is. Emphasis on songwriting.”

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This Election Will Prove If Florida Is Still Winnable For Democrats

Posted on by Kate Riga

Democratic campaign organizations stubbornly insist that Florida is their best Senate pickup opportunity in 2024 — less a booming declaration of confidence, more a reflection of the impossibly tough map. 

But on Monday, the Florida Supreme Court tossed a grenade into the campaign cycle, perhaps scuttling, at least for a year, the politics of a state that many on the left have increasingly written off as too red and getting redder. The court both allowed a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion rights onto the ballot in November, and upheld a 15-week ban, which will soon give way to a six-week one.

Testing Dobbs’ Juice

The Biden campaign seized on the court’s abortion-related decisions, declaring the state “winnable” on both the Senate and presidential level in a memo distributed to news outlets. 

For the Biden campaign and Senate Democrats, it’s good strategy to act like they think the state is in reach whether or not they actually do; at the very least, they can hope to unnerve Donald Trump and Republicans enough that they feel compelled to burn money there. 

But the Democratic optimists will retort that abortion politics have upended our electoral dynamics since Dobbs, that every single time abortion has been on the ballot since the ruling, it’s won — even in states as red as Kansas and Kentucky. 

Daniel Smith, a voting rights expert at the University of Florida who has researched the effect of other ballot initiatives on election turnout, has found that an initiative in a presidential cycle typically results in a turnout boost of about one percent. Trump won Florida in 2016 by 1.2 percent, and in 2020 by 3.4. 

The turnout bump is “not as great during presidential elections,” Smith told TPM, comparing it to the ballot initiative effect during midterms, when fewer people vote to begin with. “But in this cycle, enthusiasm is not as high as it was in past elections — measures such as these could certainly drive people to the polls who might otherwise sit it out.” 

The Biden campaign centered its Florida pitch on reproductive freedom, tracking with lessons Democrats have learned from other cycles featuring ballot amendments. Florida in particular has a rich history of voting for progressive ballot measures — a minimum wage hike, re-enfranchising people who served out felony sentences — while in the same breath voting for Republican candidates opposed to those things. 

For the left, Michigan and its abortion rights amendment is the anecdote to that troubling pattern. 

“Look at Michigan in 2022: The governor, secretary of state and attorney general ran on both voting rights and reproductive freedom — that was hugely significant,” Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, told TPM.

The implementation of the six-week ban will also likely galvanize voters by moving the threat from the theoretical to the actual. Florida is the second largest abortion provider in the country, according to activists in the state, and was long the only haven in the abortion desert of the southeast. 

‘Designed To Be High’

Yet Florida comes with an extra gauntlet that no other state has had to face: while ballot referenda usually require just a simple majority, Florida has a 60 percent threshold for an initiative to pass. 

That would have been enough to doom the abortion rights proposals in Michigan in 2022 and Ohio in 2023, both of which passed with about 57 percent (ironically enough, Florida’s 60 percent threshold, pushed in part due to opposition from lawmakers and then-Gov. Jeb Bush to a voter-passed initiative to build high-speed rail in the state, passed with 58 percent of the vote).  

Other states have attempted, unsuccessfully, to similarly limit voter power by requiring a supermajority to amend their constitutions. Ohio Republicans tried (and failed) to lift the threshold in a special election cobbled together specifically to thwart the abortion amendment. 

It’s a steep climb. The organizers behind the Florida initiative will have to surpass the work done by abortion advocates in other purple-to-red states. “It’s not only 60 percent, but 60 percent in the third largest state in the country,” said Andrea Mercado, executive director of Florida Rising and one of the organizers behind the ballot initiative.

But Florida organizers have proven themselves adept at building expansive coalitions: The felon re-enfranchisement amendment in 2018 passed with 65 percent and the 2020 minimum wage hike passed with just under 61.

And abortion isn’t your grandmother’s ballot amendment. 

“A 60 percent threshold is high, it’s designed to be high,” Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and former White House senior policy advisor for democracy and voting rights, told TPM. “But 60 percent is not unachievable for an issue with as much public salience as this one.” 

Guarding Against Republican Interference 

Perhaps the most fundamental question about the abortion amendment is whether state Republicans will let it go into effect, even if it does surpass those imposing hurdles. 

“Never underestimate what the Florida legislature will do when it comes to implementation, even of constitutional amendments,” Smith said. “We’ve seen, time and time again, this effort to thwart the supermajority will of the people.”

After the felon re-enfranchisement amendment passed with a broad mandate, Republican lawmakers quickly passed a law requiring that the reentering civilians pay off a whole host of fines and fees first (while not bothering to create any database for people to find out how much they might owe), and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) activated “election police” to hunt down those who had registered while wrongly believing they were qualified to do so. DeSantis and other Florida leaders are now being sued for their attempts to thwart the amendment.

Mercado, who also worked on the felony voting amendment, said that the organizers took pains this time to make the amendment as ironclad as possible. 

“It was important for this initiative to have literally dozens of lawyers write the strongest possible language to prevent their ability to undermine the initiative once it passes,” she said. “That’s why the language was crafted the way that it was — we really anticipated every possible thing they could do to undermine the language, then constructed it accordingly.” 

Anti-abortion foes will likely pursue litigation, as well as legislation, to stymy the amendment if it passes. 

“If this were to become part of the Constitution, it will be litigated forever,” Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz said offhand during a hearing on the proposal text. 

Organizers are ready for that too. 

“We know there will be legal attacks and legal strategies — our lawyers are prepared for that,” Mercado said. “We can’t let knowing they will attack us or sue us or legislate stop us from protecting abortion access in the third largest state in the country.”

It’s All Down to Him

Posted on by Josh Marshall

The killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers has over the last two days triggered a wholesale shift across the U.S. political spectrum. But most particularly and significantly it’s triggered a shift from the White House. Today President Biden called for an “immediate ceasefire” along with comments from other administration officials that elaborate on a broader policy shift. In response now there are cries of betrayal from Netanyahu dead-enders as well as misgivings even from some of Netanyahu’s fiercest critics that the upshot of these events is that Hamas will live to fight another day with its brigades still holding out in Rafah.

But coming to this crossroads, which to me is a very positive development, is really all on the current government in Israel and the man who orchestrates every one of its strategies, Benjamin Netanyahu. Joe Biden has gone to every possible length to support Israel in its quest to destroy Hamas’s military capability after the terrorist paramilitary group invaded Israel with multiple death squads on October 7th. He has done that even through vast destruction to the basic physical infrastructure of Gaza and vast loss of innocent human life. He has maintained this in the face of tremendous geopolitical fallout. He has continued to do this even in the face of real damage to his political standing at home and chances for reelection in November.

Continue reading “It’s All Down to Him” →

Indiana Court Gives Win To Group Arguing Religious Freedom Grants Them Right To Abortion

Posted on by Kate Riga

An Indiana appeals court Thursday upheld an injunction for plaintiffs arguing that their religious beliefs entitle them to an exemption from the state’s near-total abortion ban. 

Continue reading “Indiana Court Gives Win To Group Arguing Religious Freedom Grants Them Right To Abortion” →

Cannon Denies Trump Presidential Records Act Dismissal Bid For Now

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

The judge in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago records case on Thursday denied a motion to dismiss from the former President that had little chance of succeeding, but set the case up for further delay.

Continue reading “Cannon Denies Trump Presidential Records Act Dismissal Bid For Now” →

We Need Your Help Today

Posted on by Josh Marshall

We need your help for the final stretch of our Annual TPM Membership Drive. We’ve now signed up 858 new members out of our goal of 1,000. One of the benefits of these round numbers is that even I can easily compute the percentage in my head. We’re about 85% of the way there and we are going to pull out all the stops to hit our goal by the end of this week. If you have been thinking of joining during our drive, now is quite literally the time. Remember that in addition to all the direct benefits and supporting our work, we are running a 40% discount for the duration of the drive. So it’s also a good time for that. If you’ve never joined or perhaps let your membership lapse, please take a moment right now to click this link and join us. We all appreciate it.

Late Update: Now 893! We can definitely get past 900 this evening.

Big Mad Trump and the Specter of 2025

Posted on by Josh Marshall

One of the abiding themes of election coverage this year is that if there’s a second Trump presidency it will be more extreme, more organized and ideologically coherent and more prepared. There’s some level of psyching out the opposition going on here. But it’s still mostly correct. The major guideposts in the storyline are first that the various forces that went into Trumpism came into 2016 and 2017 not really realizing Trump was the guy. And that’s not surprising. He was Donald Trump after all, something our whole political system has difficulty remembering. Trump also staffed most of his administration with what for him were the equivalent of Hollywood leading men: ex-generals, legitimate multinational corporation CEOs, Wall Street sharks. They weren’t people Democrats like but they weren’t ideologues or even very in line with the goals Trump was pursuing by the end of his term.

The part of the story that is still too little articulated is how Trump’s personal and legal challenges galvanized and really created the whole thing. Trump’s desire for dictatorial power, to control the government in depth, to have the entire state mirror and obey his will grew from his frustration and fear of the various legal probes that stalked him. He thought when he became President that he had managed a hostile takeover of a rival company. The state and the country was his. So he could do whatever he wanted. But it didn’t turn out to be that way. And that’s how the drive to vanquish the “Deep State” was born. In other words, the kernel of Trump’s dictatorial, strongman ambitions were there from the start. But it was only the shock and ego injury of being faced with the difference between owning and governing that set him on the track, for entirely personal and self-protective reasons, of transforming the state to make it serve him in the way he wanted.

Continue reading “Big Mad Trump and the Specter of 2025” →

Trump’s Electoral College Mischief In Nebraska Fails

Posted on by David Kurtz

Morning Memo comes to you today from Pittsburgh. Sign up for the email version of Morning Memo.

Not Over Yet?

Republicans in the Nebraska legislature failed last night to pass a bill that would have awarded the state’s electoral votes on a winner-takes-all basis – a change that would likely cost Joe Biden one vote in what could be a close 2024 election.

The Trump-backed move to change the rules of the game in Nebraska had been dormant for some time before it suddenly ramped up this week at the urging of right-wing gadfly Charlie Kirk.

The legislative session doesn’t end until April 18, so the measure could be brought back up for a vote again. But the procedural mechanics and the way it failed last night suggest this may be the end of the road for it. The legislator who facilitated bringing it to a vote tweeted last night that she thinks it’s over:

Keep an eye on this one.

What’s Up In Wisconsin?

Both constitutional amendments passed this week by voters in Wisconsin grew of out bats*** election conspiracy theories. But it’s the second of the two referenda, which allows only designated election officials to administer elections, that is particularly worrying, experts tell TPM’s Khaya Himmelman.

Trump On Track To Stand Trial

The hush-money trial remains on track to start April 15 after the trial judge rejected Trump’s latest immunity argument.

Trump has filed new motions to recuse the judge and to delay the trial die to pretrial publicity, but neither is likely to go anywhere or derail the planned start of the trial.

Pretty Much

Picking Through The Aileen Cannon Mess

Everyone is still digesting the filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the Mar-a-Lago case which failed to disguise prosecutors’ incredulousness at U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon:

  • Aaron Blake: Jack Smith puts Judge Aileen Cannon on notice
  • Harry Litman:

Profiles From Inside Trump World

  • NYT: Trump Defense Lawyer Todd Blanche Gambled a Gilded Manhattan Career to Represent Him
  • WaPo: How Steve Bannon guided the MAGA movement’s rebound from Jan. 6
  • NYT: Trump’s Bond Benefactor Don Hankey Earned Billions From Subprime Car Loans

Hardening The Fed Gov’t Against Trump II

The Biden administration is taking new steps to make it harder for a Trump II presidency to strip civil service protections from federal workers via Trump’s long-planned Schedule F scheme.

Law And Order

  • Meet some of the violent Jan. 6 rioters Donald Trump keeps calling “hostages.”
  • An Iowa woman who tried to boost her husband’s unsuccessful 2020 congressional bid through a voter fraud scheme was sentenced by a federal judge to four months in prison.
  • The Shvartsman brothers plead guilty in Trump Media insider-trading scheme.

Ya Don’t Say?

One of the brothers just referenced above, Michael Shvartsman, makes a cameo in this new piece from The Guardian: “Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.”

2024 Ephemera

  • NBC News: Several Trump supporters involved in Jan. 6 are running for office this year
  • Politico: Democratic tactics against RFK Jr. are rattling his campaign
  • NYT: Many Democrats Are Worried Trump Will Beat Biden. This One Isn’t.
  • AP: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) recovering from blood clot surgery.

White House Still Thinks Ukraine Aid Is Doable

Politico: “For all their frustration with the painstakingly slow pace in the House, administration officials are privately hopeful their approach could result in Congress starting to move on an aid package later this month.”

The Etta James Soundtrack Is Perfect

I tend to be wary of post-disaster videos flying around on social media, but this one seems well verified (here, for example):

Phew, That Was A Journey

I flew to Pittsburgh yesterday to surprise my son on his 21st birthday with a bottle of Scotch that I bought the day he was born.

Back then, I figured the hardest part would be keeping the bottle intact for 21 years, but it turned out to be lot easier than keeping him in one piece. After his last two years – broken pelvis, broken femur, broken spine, and broken brain across two different traumatic accidents – that whiskey tasted so, so good.

Thanks for indulging me a brief personal celebration.

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Taiwan Assesses Damage After 7.4 Magnitude Earthquake

Posted on by Christine Frapech

On Wednesday morning, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake rocked Taiwan’s east coast during the morning rush hour. Search and rescue efforts are ongoing and have so far reported 9 people dead and about 900 injured. The quake caused landslides and damaged roads, bridges and tunnels. There is also substantial damage to both residential and business buildings. Taiwan experiences regular earthquakes, however the last one with comparable strength was a 7.7 magnitude in 1999.

Assessing damage to a community building

Taoyuan City Deputy Mayor Su Junbin inspects the Sanyuanjidi Community Building and Dazhi Citizen Activity Center in Bade District as at least four people were killed and hundreds of others injured during a magnitude 7.4 earthquake, which struck off Taiwan’s eastern coast on April 3, 2024. (Photo by Taoyuan City Government/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Damage to an elevated track for the New Taipei metro

An elevated track for the New Taipei Metro is damaged following an earthquake on April 3, 2024 in New Taipei, Taiwan. A major earthquake has hit the east coast of Taiwan with a magnitude of 7.3, the strongest on the island in 25 years. (Photo by Yang Chengchen/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)

Large crack appears in the road

Roads cracks at Taipingshan Park due to the earthquake. Taipingshan Park will be closed for days due to cracks in the road. (Photo by Yilan Forestry & Nat. Cons. Agency/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Falling rocks from the hillside obstruct traffic

Rocks lay on the road and stop the traffic after falling off from a cliff. (Photo by Annabelle Chih/Getty Images)

Rocks from a landslide completely blocking a road

A view of rocks that fell and blocked a road. The Guguan Works Section sent out machines and tools to open the area, and called on people who wanted to enter the mountainous area to pay attention to the road conditions. (Photo by Taichung City Fire Department/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Falling rocks severly damage vehicles

A small passenger vehicle is seriously damaged after being hit by falling rocks on Zhonghengbian Road. (Photo by Guguan Public Works Section/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Uranus Building is severely tilted after a quake

The red building, called the Uranus Building, is partially collapsed. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Rescuers work at a partially collapsed building

Rescuers work at a partially collapsed building. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Rescue work at a partially collapsed building

Rescuers work at the partially collapsed building. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Rescue workers searching the collapsed Uranus Building

A frame grab from a video taken on April 3, 2024 shows rescue workers searching for survivors at the damaged Uranus Building in Hualien. (Photo by STR/AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images)

Another view of the Uranus Building

The Uranus Building at Xuanyuan Road is tilted severely, at an angle of more than 60 degrees, and one person is still missing. The police immediately went to the rescue after receiving the report. (Photo by Hualien County Fire Department/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Fire department workers search a collapsed building

Kaohsiung Fire Department staff search inside a building. (Photo by Kaohsiung Fire Department/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Fire department workers carrying out search and rescue operations

Fire fighters carry out search and rescue operations among the rubble. (Photo by Ministry of Interior / Handout /Anadolu via Getty Images)

Suspended train services cause large crowds in Shenzhen North Railway Station

Passengers wait at the waiting hall of Shenzhen North Railway Station on April 3, 2024 in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province of China. (Photo by Chen Wen/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)

Cracked wall of a residential building

Walls of residential buildings crack after a powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake rocked the entire island on April 3, 2024 in Hualien County, Taiwan. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)