Ridiculous that #AileenCannon says that there are "novel & difficult" #CIPA issues when her delays have meant the CIPA issues have barely been considered by the court. The only section of CIPA she has considered was §4, which is straightforward.
JUST IN: In response to a POLITICO petition, the DC Circuit has greenlit the potential release of documents related to the executive privilege fights #JackSmith undertook to force high-level #Trump aides to testify: https://documentcloud.org/documents/24601551-boom
Wild stuff in unsealed (heavily redacted) FBI intrvw from high-level #Trump-wrld person related to #documents investig
Ex: witness afraid to have interview recorded..fear of reprisal...appears 2 b..attempt to leverage Trump fam mmbers to push him to return classif docs
Won't take long to crowdsource IDs of many redacted from these docs. Prty easy to decipher # of them to high degree of cert which spks to why #JackSmith wanted more signif redactions/sealing https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.470.4.pdf
Judge #Cannon retracted her 2/6 order that wd have unsealed identities of ~2 dozen potential govt witnesses or FBI agents. She thereby likely averted having #JackSmith take her to 11th Cir over the issue
Her 24-pg order is defensive, blaming Jack for not having laid out his argumt more clearly earlier. With some basis tho. Jack’s team isn’t flawless. Its failure to meaningfully respond to #Trump’s & Press Coalition’s argumts for unsealing in Jan was baffling #legal
US District Court Judge #AileenCannon agreed Tuesday to end a long-running dispute w/prosecutors over whether government-agent witnesses in #Trump’s #ClassifiedDocuments#criminal#trial should be publicly identified in court filings.
Her order was the 2nd time this month she has criticized #DOJ lawyers while ruling mostly in their favor.
Judge Aileen #Cannon has partially granted special counsel #JackSmith's motion to redact the names of government witnesses in the classified #documents case.
But Cannon won't make it easy: Smith will still have to justify to the court each name redaction. #legal#TrumpIndictment#Trump
I kid you not: Marjorie Taylor Greene has released a video on YouTube, where she says, “If I had it my way, we would have been successful in our [sic] objection on January 6, and [Joe Biden] wouldn’t even be president.”
That is the same woman, who claimed the violence on January 6 was started by federal agents disguised as insurrectionists. And now, she says, if “WE would have been successful… on January 6”.
Via Kyle Cheney: 1/.. (oops, I’m posting these in reverse chronological order)
👀 #JackSmith argues that even if the #SCOTUS sharply narrows the obstruction statute in Fischer, #Trump's two obstruction counts are still valid because it would apply to the "creation" of false documents (a.k.a. elector certificates. #legal
"And the notion that predicted defiance of the Commander- in-Chief ’s orders is the backstop against criminal behavior by a President is not what the Constitution provides for."
Kyle Cheney:
JUST IN: Long list of retired generals has sided with #JackSmith on the argument of presidential immunity, filing a brief with #SCOTUS #legal#Trump
Tonight, #Trump's team released their 37-page recusal motion. That means that Merchan -- who ordered last month that both sides need his express permission before filing further pre-trial motions -- allowed them to do so.
Trump's justification for a second recusal motion, after his first motion was denied last August, is that there are both changed circumstances and newly discovered evidence. #legal
The point: if #Cannon wants to tank the case for #Trump, there are a ton of ways she can do it other than the PRA (many of which can come during trial). She knows this. #JackSmith knows this. He needs to get her off the case to avoid all this, but will have to wait and pick the best time. That time is not now.
Emptywheel:
If I'm Jack Smith (I'm not ), I wait until she forces the witness ID.
@GottaLaff I wonder if #JackSmith were to withdraw some of the more heinous charges for "further investigation" and leave her enough rope to hang herself on the lesser ones. She's not completely stupid. She'd know that those charges are going to come back and if she screws up in this trial, she can't protect Trump in the big trial.
“Separately, to the extent the #SpecialCounsel demands an anticipatory finalization of #JuryInstructions prior to #trial, prior to a charge conference, & prior to the presentation of trial defenses & evidence, the Court declines that demand as unprecedented & unjust….“
“In an open display of frustration, federal prosecutors on Tuesday night told the judge overseeing #Trump’s classified #documents case that a “fundamentally flawed” order she had issued was causing delays & asked her to quickly resolve a critical dispute about 1 of Trump’s defenses — leaving them time to appeal if needed.
The unusual & risky move by the prosecutors, contained in a 24-pg filing, signaled their mounting impatience w Judge #Cannon” #legal
Tues night, prosecutors told Judge #AileenCannon who is overseeing Trump’s #ClassifiedDocuments case that a “fundamentally flawed” order she had issued was causing #delays & asked her to quickly resolve a critical dispute about one of #Trump’s defenses — leaving them time to appeal if needed.
In their filing, prosecutors in #SpecialCounsel, #JackSmith’s office, all but begged Judge #AileenCannon to move the case along & make a binding decision about one of #Trump’s most brazen claims: that he cannot be prosecuted for having taken home a trove of #NationalSecurity docs after leaving office bc he transformed them into his own personal property under…the PRA.
The prosecutors derided that assertion as “not based on any facts,” adding that it was a “justification that was concocted more than a year after” #Trump left the WH.
“It would be pure fiction,” the prosecutors wrote, “to suggest that highly #ClassifiedDocuments created by members of the #intelligence community & #military & presented to the president of the United States during his term in office were ‘purely private.’”
Lawyers for #Trump asked a judge on Tues night to pause a group of #civil lawsuits seeking to hold him accountable for the #violence at the Capitol on #Jan6, 2021, until after his #federal#criminal trial connected to the same events was over.
The request…to pause the civil cases was the latest example of Trump trying to pit his multiple #legal matters against one another in an effort to #delay them.
They said that in so doing, #Trump might reveal his strategy for defending himself against related #criminal charges brought against him by the #SpecialCounsel#JackSmith.
“Given the substantial overlap in factual & #legal allegations between these cases & the DC criminal case,” the lawyers wrote, there is “a substantial risk that proceeding in this matter now will expose the defense’s theory to the prosecution in advance of trial.”