I keep singing to myself, “I’ve got one judge in my pocket….” (with apologies to Alanis Morrissette).
It’s quite simply astounding at how Judge Aileen Cannon hops to when her master calls. When Yambo needs help, there she is. Even when she has NO LEGAL STANDING to do so. This is just plain cuckoo bananas, from a legal standpoint. Via Slate:
But Trump and his co-defendants asked Cannon to jump ahead of the 11th Circuit and muzzle the Justice Department herself. She obliged on Tuesday, issuing a sweeping injunction that attempts to prohibit Garland, Smith, and the whole agency from publishing the final report or any drafts of it.
Here’s the problem: Cannon cannot do this. The startling breadth of her order is extremely dubious, but the legal flaw runs even deeper; she is purporting to exercise authority that she just does not have. That’s because Cannon no longer holds jurisdiction over this case; she has relinquished it to the 11th Circuit, which has thus far declined to issue the very relief that she granted. She therefore lacks any power to interfere with the Justice Department’s release of Smith’s report.
Yet when she issues these cuckoo rulings, they must be addressed.
On a political level, it makes perfect sense that Cannon would run interference for Trump yet again. She has tried to kill this prosecution at every turn, first obstructing the Justice Department’s investigation by attempting to seize control over its probe in a series of error-ridden opinions that were swiftly overturned. She then slow-walked the prosecution before throwing it out altogether in a profoundly flawed decision that flouted Supreme Court precedent. The judge has acted much more like an advocate for Trump than a neutral arbiter, and she now has a vested interest in shielding the president-elect—whom she has essentially treated like a client—from a damning public report.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department indicated that it might never release the volume of Smith’s report about the classified documents case in an apparent bid to salvage the other volume’s publication. Inauguration Day, though, is less than two weeks away. A jurist as shameless as Cannon has plenty of tools left at her disposal to run out the clock, keeping the entire report on ice until Trump comes in and buries it for good.
I’d guess former prosecutor Cannon was likely appointed to the bench on the recommendation to Trump by mob boss/buddy/donor John Rosatti — Trump associate and ALLEGED FORMER member of the Columbo crime family, for whom Cannon’s husband Josh Lorence served as an executive at BurgerFi, Rosatti’s high-end burger chain. (Just a thought: How many “former” members of the Mafia aren’t dead – or in the witness protection program? Do you just stop paying dues?)
And I’d also guess the rapid acceleration of her mediocre judicial “career” has to do with her ALLEGED potential usefulness as an ALLEGEDLY mob-connected SCOTUS judge.
Once you think about how it theoretically ALLEGEDLY happened, it all makes sense. Allegedly!
