Trump's Classified Docs Theft: Mar-A-Lago, FBI Subpoenas, Searches & Seizures - DOJ, Garland, GOP Madness - Spy Hard

[RTH10260]

[MN-Skeptic]

He can't appeal, he's unconstitutional.

I'm not 100% certain he even still exists, in violation of the Constitution.

Jack Smith is a Schrödinger's special counsel. He may simultaneously exist and not exist at this moment.

[Sam the Centipede]

I'm confused: do we now need to see Jack Smith's birth certificate to prove he's a Natural Born Prosecutor?

[pipistrelle]

Does he have to give his pay back, hmmm?

Odds she's going to get slapped down hard?

[Ben-Prime]

He can't appeal, he's unconstitutional.

I'm not 100% certain he even still exists, in violation of the Constitution.

I think it's like The Snap, all across the U.S. states and territories, Special Counsels are saying they don't feel so good and dissolving.

...

...

Too soon?

[RTH10260]

titled an anaysis

How Clarence Thomas helped thwart prosecution of Trump in classified documents case
Entwined in ethics scandals, the US supreme court justice has now upended two federal prosecutions of Trump

Ed Pilkington
Mon 15 Jul 2024 23.27 CEST

Clarence Thomas has struck again.

To his impressive list of recent supreme court victories – abolishing the right to an abortion, eradicating affirmative action, undermining federal regulations, and more – the ultraconservative justice can now add thwarting the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents.

On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon astonished the judicial world by dismissing the case. She did so based on a widely discredited legal argument that the special counsel who brought the prosecution, Jack Smith, had been improperly appointed.

The argument, initially aired by the former US president’s lawyers, had received scant support in judicial circles, given that stretching back a quarter of a century it has been repeatedly rejected by the courts. But there was one jurist who encouraged Cannon to pursue such contrarian thinking: Thomas.

Two weeks before Cannon’s stunning dismissal, Thomas essentially prodded her into making the move. In a concurring opinion to Trump v US, the US supreme court ruling awarding the former president immunity over his “official acts” in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection, the hard-right justice sketched a legal roadmap that Cannon then duly followed.

Thomas pulled out a line from the appointments clause of the US constitution and used it to argue that the special counsel lacked authority to pursue his two federal criminal prosecutions against Trump. He claimed that in the absence of a law from Congress specifically establishing the role of special counsel, Smith’s appointment was invalid.

As reported last week, Thomas has long used his concurring opinions to signal to outside parties that he would like them to pursue his extreme legal theories. In this case, though he did not mention Cannon by name, he left little to the imagination.

He invited the “lower courts” to look into the “essential questions concerning the special counsel’s appointment before proceeding” with Smith’s prosecutions.

Cannon obediently adopted Thomas’s radical thinking, subsuming it into her 93-page judgment almost to the letter. She cites his concurring opinion in Trump v US at least three times.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... ments-case

[RTH10260]

[bob]

The prosecutor filed a (boiler plate) notice of appeal. Off to the 11th.

[RTH10260]

Are there some more details on the dismissal available? I understand that the order is like 90 pages long.

[MN-Skeptic]

Are there some more details on the dismissal available? I understand that the order is like 90 pages long.

The 93 page order: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... =1&title=1

[Foggy]

Thank you, MN-Skeptic.

[RTH10260]

H/T @MN-Skeptic

[RTH10260]

according to MTN Michael Popok the 11th Circuit has accepted the notice of appeal and generated an initial calendar.

[realist]

according to MTN Michael Popok the 11th Circuit has accepted the notice of appeal and generated an initial calendar.

And even if it's expedited, and assuming they overturn Cannon, then Trump will appeal to SCOTUS who will not be in any hurry to decide it.

I stated quite some time ago that this case will not be heard before the election, if at all, and I stick by that. Would love to be wrong, but just sayin'.

[bob]

according to MTN Michael Popok the 11th Circuit has accepted the notice of appeal and generated an initial calendar.

This is routine, perhaps even automated.

It means nothing, other than the 11th has acknowledged a notice of appeal was received.

Some on the bird site believe the prosecutor "lacks standing" to appeal. The plaintiff, the United States of America, appealed.

If the defendants want to argue that the prosecutor who filed the notice lacked the authority to do so, well, good luck with that argument in the 11th.

[Greatgrey]

From our very own Butterfly Bilderberg
(didn’t mean to imply she wrote it (she could), just she found it)

United States v. Nixon at Fifty: Why Judge Cannon Is Wrong About the Attorney General’s Authority to Select a Special Counsel
https://www.justsecurity.org/98037/doj-special-counsel/

For almost a half-century thereafter, the Supreme Court’s conclusion about the Attorney General’s authority became common, uncontradicted wisdom. No one in any of the three branches of government ever questioned it, and Attorneys General repeatedly acted in accord with, and reliance upon, it.

Until last Monday. On July 15, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon concluded that the Supreme Court was wrong about the Attorney General’s authority. And on the basis of that holding, Judge Cannon granted former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment against him in the Mar-a-Lago retained-documents case.

This essay explains why the Supreme Court (and virtually everyone else for 50 years) was right about the Attorney General’s authority and why Judge Cannon therefore erred in dismissing the indictment. [Disclosure: I was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel at the time of the Attorney General’s appointment of Jack Smith as Special Counsel. Nothing in this essay, however, reflects any confidential information from my tenure at OLC.]

[pipistrelle]

Why Judge Cannon is wrong covers all her topics.

[MN-Skeptic]

Kyle Cheney

JUST IN: 11th Circuit lays out appeal timeline for Jack Smith. Standard briefing schedule runs through mid-October unless Smith seeks to expedite.

[bob]

Kyle Cheney

JUST IN: 11th Circuit lays out appeal timeline for Jack Smith. Standard briefing schedule runs through mid-October unless Smith seeks to expedite.

A peeve.

People like Cheney should know better than to say the 11th's order (and the appeal generally) is about Smith.

The plaintiff/appellant is the United States. Smith is one (of several) counsel of record appearing for the United States.

I get using Smith's name helps the reader understand which case this is, but it also is using the defendant's misleading framing.

"in the recovered document's appeal, the appellate court's standard briefing schedule runs through October. Either party could move to change the schedule."

[RVInit]

Kyle Cheney

JUST IN: 11th Circuit lays out appeal timeline for Jack Smith. Standard briefing schedule runs through mid-October unless Smith seeks to expedite.

A peeve.

People like Cheney should know better than to say the 11th's order (and the appeal generally) is about Smith.

The plaintiff/appellant is the United States. Smith is one (of several) counsel of record appearing for the United States.

I get using Smith's name helps the reader understand which case this is, but it also is using the defendant's misleading framing.

"in the recovered document's appeal, the appellate court's standard briefing schedule runs through October. Either party could move to change the schedule."

One of my pet peeves is how often liberals take on the verbiage of right wingers without thinking about it.

If done right, i.e. Dark Brandon, it can be powerful. But that isn't what is happening here.

[Suranis]

ya a classic example is how the Mueller investigation became about "collusion simply because a Fat failed president kept screaming the word about it. Then when the report came out and "shock" it didn't involve collusion in a legal sense people were flat footed. Its almost like someone kept screaming the word because he knew he wasn't guilty of that. Funny, huh?

[MN-Skeptic]

A peeve.

People like Cheney should know better than to say the 11th's order (and the appeal generally) is about Smith.

The plaintiff/appellant is the United States. Smith is one (of several) counsel of record appearing for the United States.

I get using Smith's name helps the reader understand which case this is, but it also is using the defendant's misleading framing.

I understand your issue. That said, IANAL and I appreciate Cheney's tweet including Smith's name because Smith has become the face of the case and he is the one continually being condemned by Trump. Without Smith's name being front and center in the tweet, many non-legal followers will not read further, so consider the audience Cheney is trying to reach with this tweet.

[bob]

I understand your issue. That said, IANAL and I appreciate Cheney's tweet including Smith's name because Smith has become the face of the case and he is the one continually being condemned by Trump. Without Smith's name being front and center in the tweet, many non-legal followers will not read further, so consider the audience Cheney is trying to reach with this tweet.

I get that, but I also think better writing could fix that.

A common trope among the defendent's defenders is that Smith "lacks standing" to appeal. Or that he's no longer a special counsel. Neither of those statements are accurate.

Smith isn't appealing (so his "standing" is irrelevant); the government appealed.

The court's ruling dismissed the case; it did not say anything about Smith's continued employment. (Having said that, "for completeness," if I were the DOJ, I would have proceedings going forward filed by someone who is an actual, permanent DOJ attorney.)

[MN-Skeptic]

I get that, but I also think better writing could fix that.

Maybe include Cannon's name in the tweet instead of Smith's?

[bob]

I get that, but I also think better writing could fix that.

Maybe include Cannon's name in the tweet instead of Smith's?

Yes! Not only does it provide sufficient clarity, it also more accurately explains why there's an appeal, i.e., because Cannon dismissed.