Her Honor Aileen Cannon might want to start thinking about her own future. It looks like playing Donald Trump’s lapdog didn’t work out so well as she would have hoped. The three-judge panel of appellate judges (two out of three were Trump appointees, I might add) unanimously ruled Wednesday that Cannon “erred when she prevented federal prosecutors from using the 100 documents — marked as classified — recovered from Trump’s estate as part of a criminal inquiry.” Politico:

“[Trump] has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” the panel ruled in a 29-page decision. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents.”

Two of the three judges on the panel, Andrew Brasher and Britt Grant, were appointed to the court by Trump. The third, Robin Rosenbaum, was appointed by President Barack Obama. In the unanimous decision, the judges declared it “self-evident” that the public interest favored allowing the Justice Department to determine whether any of the records were improperly disclosed, risking national security damage.

And it’s going to be a hot time in the Mar-a-Lago kitchen tonight. The French fries will go naked, we feel safe in predicting that.

It never was a good ploy to begin with and that’s why it fell apart so readily.

Some people like to celebrate Wednesday as Hump Day, being as how it’s that much sooner to the weekend. I don’t think Trumpty Dumpty will be amongst them, at least not this week. He’s just that much closer to the pen.

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21 COMMENTS

  1. Cannon erred in a very big way. I’m shocked I tell you, shocked.

    How did she get this judgeship exactly? It certainly was not because of her grasp of the law because she doesn’t have one.

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  2. No one is more glad that I was wrong about the 11th than I am, seems Judge Pryor decided, or had it decided for him, that discretion in this case, is the better part of valor.

    On with the investigation!

    • I know I keep saying it but I’ll say it again – The Federalist Society does NOT want this particular Trump mess in the spotlight. I continue to believe Cannon’s TFS “handler” told her from the beginning how to dodge this – the easiest and “quietist” way that would have resulted in a couple of days of news would have been to refer the matter to the Federal Magistrate Judge who issued the Search Warrant. Another option, one that would have gotten more attention from Trump and the media would have been transferring the whole matter to the DC federal district court where by law (the Presidential Records Act) says it should be litigated if some issue comes up. So she had options, and being young I’m sure they had hopes someone so obviously (now not just The Federalist Society but everyone else now knows it!) compliant could have been quietly groomed for the appellate level. But she chose to listen to Trump’s rep. I’m that ever since her original order and especially after she enjoined DOJ from even investigating the classified documents TFS had had a TEAM of people down there in FL “working the refs” – all those GOP appointees on the 11th Circuit who all just happen to be TFS members. I wasn’t sure, especially with a three judge panel but if this hadn’t gone the way it did and DOJ requested an en banc hearing the vote to overturn judge Cannon would have been overwhelming. This is NOT a hill for them to fight and die on.

      • Yeah, pretty much my take, Denis. Cannon has proven herself fairly useless as a TFS pawn and so may well be out in less than a year as Bill Palmer has asserted. As Greg Rucka put it, “There are no second chances, kid.”

        • She COULD have listened to her Federalist Society contact/handler and take one of the options I’ve mentioned right at the beginning. Yes, Trump would have been pissed and made a stink and she’d have become “dead to him” and all that but boy oh boy was TFS licking its chops. Only forty, in a backwater so they could spend some more time coaching her (“grooming”) on how to write law from the bench, radical conservative law of course and also teach her about the different way of things on an appellate court they had to have been thrilled. Until she blew them off and went all in for Trump. So, their dreams of the next time there’s a GOP President and enough Senators to get 50 votes, in part by her being able to “piously” claim independence because she didn’t do Trum’s bidding pissed all that away. A year from now when she will have had enough time to look back on the past month with clear eyes her loved ones may need to keep a close eye on her as the depression over what she’s done to her career dreams sets in.

          • I”m not so sure she has the sense to look back and regret. Her decision in the former guy case was so bizarre and off the rails I honestly wonder if she knows what day it is and where she currently resides. Former guy never has liked women (or anyone else for that matter) who might be smarter than him and it sure is demonstrated in this one.

  3. So now Trump will probably appeal this decision to either the full panel of 11th district judges, or the Supreme Court, or both. Meanwhile, the DOJ crimnal investigation as well as the security investigation get put off at the jeopardy of our national security.

    I can only hope that a majority of the Supreme Court justices have the spine to outvote Clarence Thomas. And do it quickly!

    • Nooooo…look again, Daisy. With the DOJ’s injunction in place, they’re now free to work on those 100 documents in peace. By the time an appeal rolls around, they’ll have what they need, rendering the whole thing moot. And seeing as SCOTUS denied Trump his second term, I doubt they’ll do any favors here. They just want him to go away and if he won’t go quietly, they’ll make it as painful as possible. Not just the federales that need to make examples of the disobedient.

      • One tho’–there could be the danger of the 11th or s.c. deciding the papers were not the DoJ’s to scrutinize for whatever reason. You know it’s possible. Should that happen, regardless of where DoJ is in their investigation, it becomes that poisonous tree thing–unusable. I doubt the DoJ would get this into a courtroom before the year is out and maybe even not until 2024 and that is more than enough time for the full 11th and the s.c. to get their hands on it.

        One other thing: the s.c. would not be deciding in trump’s favor FOR trump. They’d do it for a future prez of their liking or choosing. Let’s face it, trump is old enough and unhealthy enough, he has a limited amount of time left to be a pain in everyone’s ass. I would bet good money the s.c. sees him as being in the rear view mirror soon. Six of them want, and want badly, to destroy the nation and install a theocratic government. I could see them deciding in trump’s favor but looking a few years in the future. The s.c. pulls decisions out of its ass regularly with this six political hack justices so I expect a great deal of nonsense until it is fixed.

      • Ah, no problem, Daisy. Just gotta remember to double-check your info. And Teri Kanefield on Twitter is the absolute best at getting to the truth on what’s REALLY going on with these legal shenanigans.

    • It’s all about time. All Donny wants is to delay, delay delay. He hopes if he can prevent being indicted for anything until the midterms then hope the GOP will take control of the Senate so his pack of thieves disavow all the shit he’s in.

  4. From some of the bits and pieces I’ve seen from the ruling, it seems like they slapped judge Cannon down hard. At my age I remember the days when corporal punishment still took place in schools. The only paddling I ever got was in high school, when the Principal went into one of his fits of rage and stomped out ordering his Vice-Principal to tend to it. Mr. Sims however was a good guy who’d been there to hear the whole story and knew damn well my friends and I weren’t the ones who were in the wrong. So he took us into his office and shut the door, and gently tapped each of us a few times on the butt, while smacking his hand down hard on a thick book on his desk so the noise could be heard through the door! He gave us a wink and told us to “sell it” and sent us on our way. However, growing up I know some principals flat-out whaled on kids with a paddle. And some even kept one with big holes drilled into it to raise welts! I mention this because it seems like that’s the type of paddle the appeals court chose to use on judge Cannon and her bullshit ruling!

    • If you’d like a good breakdown of the salient points, check out Teri Kanefield’s Twitter feed. TL;DR In the 11th’s eyes, Cannon done effed up.

  5. THIS right here is what I’ve been trying to tell you all. Any judge Trump appointed runs on the same principle he does: “Eff you, baby, I got mine.” Gratitude and loyalty are a foreign concept to these people and going along with his antics only derail whatever future they want on the bench. Look for SCOTUS to do him the same way if he goes there, especially now that it looks like Ginni Thomas is testifying to the J6 Committee.

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  6. Seems to me that among the passags of the 11th’s decision I read that scary word “abuse” as applied to Cannon’s unreasoned reasoning in arriving at what passes for a judicial decision in dumpsterworld.

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