Ok, I’m flat-out surprised. Stunned even. Then again, maybe it’s just a no-brainer thing to make it seem like she’s doing her job properly prior to some new nutbar decision helping out Trump. Who knows? What matters today is that Judge “Loose “Cannon” actually fired a well-aimed shot exactly where she should have. And for good measure a warning shot across the bow too. From Raw Story:
Cannon, a Trump appointee, threw cold water on calls to have a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) at the former president’s home so he could securely look at documents to prepare his defense.
Citing national security, the judge ordered the so-called Classified Information Security Officers (CISOs) to establish a working space for the defense in an existing secure facility.
When I sat down at my computer to browse news I couldn’t believe it when I read this. My initial reaction to the headline was that The Onion was acting in really poor taste but I typed in a search query and damned if multiple outlets haven’t noted this. Not that if you watched news on TV you’d know it. They’ve been droning on most of the day about the dude in PA that was the subject of a two-week manhunt got caught. Important and good news to be sure but after a while I said screw the news today because that was going to be the only thing we heard about.
Well, I’m glad I decided to check out internet news. It seems some journalists out there are actually reporting on other things. And this particular thing is huge. Trump is surely in a rage that has someone standing by with a syringe full of a knockout sedative. Because while I suspect it’s an idle threat Judge Cannon didn’t stop with denying Trump’s request to have all “his” documents back at the scene of the crime so he could do whatever (and I don’t even want to imagine what) with them. That they will have to be viewed in an area prepared by security officials in an existing SCIF. Nope.
She also warned:
“The limitations on disclosure of classified information set forth in this Order are binding on Defendant and his counsel and violations may result in criminal and/or civil penalties,”
Like I said, the threat of action if Trump ignores her and shoots off his mouth about things she’s just warned him to shut the hell up about is almost certainly a hollow one but still… Saying it publicly is going to enrage Trump that much more!
Anyone want to bet he’ll try to appeal this? I’m not sure it’s an appealable issue but Trump will at least threaten to do so. We’ll see. For now we can sit and wait for the inevitable weird combination of meltdown & explosion on Truth Social that Trump will surely treat us to.
True to form, Trump’s having an all-caps rave session on Truth Social, but he’s too busy talking about the border, inflation and insulting Mitt Romney. But there’s more to this story. New York Times:
For the past few weeks, lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump and federal prosecutors have been arguing about a touchy subject: Should Mr. Trump, accused of mishandling classified documents, be allowed to discuss the secret papers with his lawyers in the secure facility he once used as president at Mar-a-Lago — the very place the F.B.I. swooped down on last summer to retrieve some of the records after he failed to return them?
On Wednesday, Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is presiding over the documents case, gave an answer to that question — albeit one that was rather vague. In an order setting up a series of rules to protect the classified materials at the heart of the proceeding, Judge Cannon said that Mr. Trump would indeed need to use a secure facility to review the sensitive records, but she did not specify where that facility would be.
The dispute about how and where Mr. Trump could talk about the secret papers in the case began last month when his lawyers asked Judge Cannon to allow him to re-establish the sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, “at or near” Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, that he once used for classified materials when he was president.
The property was already protected by the Secret Service, the lawyers wrote, and permitting Mr. Trump to talk there about the classified documents likely to emerge during his case would cut down on the “immense practical and logistical hurdles and costs” of having him travel to a SCIF in Miami or another nearby city run by the courts. […]
But the order that Judge Cannon issued on Wednesday had a subtext. It touched upon the knotty issue of what, if any, accommodations should be made to a former president on having legal conversations about the same classified documents that the government claims he illegally took with him from the White House.
Prosecutors in the documents case had initially proposed barring Mr. Trump from even reviewing some of the classified discovery evidence — a position that seemed to outrage the former president’s lawyers.
Even though the government has since backed away from that suggestion, one of the lawyers, Christopher M. Kise, expressed shock about it in a filing to Judge Cannon last month, writing that it was unusual given that Mr. Trump was “the 45th president of the United States and, as such, had access to and knowledge of each and every one of our nation’s most sensitive secrets.”
The indictment filed against Mr. Trump in the classified materials case accuses him of illegally holding on to 32 documents in violation of the Espionage Act. It also charged him with conspiring with two co-defendants — Walt Nauta, one of his personal aides, and Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago — to obstruct the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve the sensitive materials.
News just broke that Walt Nauta also was ruled against and cannot have “wide access to classified documents.” Maybe Loose Cannon is getting spooked and decided to do her actual job as an officer of the court and a member of the bench, rather than as Trump fluffer. How refreshing that would be.
******************UPDATE***************************
It seems Judge Cannon didn’t specifically say “NO Donald, you don’t get to make a new very special most beautiful SCIF of your very own at Mar A Lago, or anywhere else for that matter.” So there’s some “aha!” talk going on. But you know what? I call bullshiite on that. The judge’s order was well written (to my admittedly non-lawyer mind) and detailed and made clear that all classified information belongs to the government, and it was the government via the appointed CISCO who would be responsible for assuring a SCIF would be made available for Trump.
In practical terms (which the judge damn well knows) that means a government Security Officer/Specialist will be in control, and it’s also worth noting the term “business hours” in Judge Cannon’s order. You know what? The CISCO in charge is going to make space available in a building with an existing SCIF as close as possible (as I understand it there’s one fifteen or twenty minutes away from Mar A Lago) for Trump’s lawyers and Trump himself to go to during regular business hours! And it will be up to the CISCO to decide if some circumstance is extraordinary enough to allow access outside that time. But the bottom line is that there’s going to be no new SCIF created wherever Trump happens to be residing at any given time. Since I found it, take a look at the actual order issued by Cannon (I’ll make it easy, go to section 21 at the bottom of page 9) that begins with:
Secure area of Review. The CISCO shall establish procedures to assure a SCIF is available during business hours to the defense, and at other times upon reasonable request as approved by the Court and United States Marshals Service.
As I said, there’s a large federal building not far from Mar A Lago with courtrooms, U.S. Marshals in presence in significant numbers and yes, an existing SCIF. Unlike Mar A Lago which was never secure when Trump was President, this building IS secure, and already has long had a special area inside it. A SCIF. But from where I sit the judge made clear that Trump doesn’t get to call the shots on access, the government via the CISCO does and I think she knows how stupid she’d look ordering millions to be spent creating and staffing (24 hours with a CISCO present to monitor the room and documents) so that’s that. Trump can suck it and take a ride over to the federal building IF he wants to bother doing so.
One last thing. We are into the evening here out east and still this story seems to be the province of print journalism. TV news doesn’t seem interested in it. Given I’m not exactly the most widely read of authors the response to this suggests maybe the talking heads might want to cover it. I wonder why there aren’t?
I don’t get why he would even need to see them. One, he had them in his possession for years and two I would think his lawyers just need to stipulate (or not) that a specific document is classified in a certain way and a general description of the subject matter.
What they might want is what if I were a lawyer who was defending Trump and actually wanted to do my job properly is to backtrack on each classified document to see if the classification level has at some time been reduced. What would matter of course is the classification at the time they were STOLEN but the defense would try to muddy the waters whenever and however they can. Bascially, their hope is to be able to claim “Well, it WAS classified at this high level at one time but not anymore.” Or a more lame argument of “Despite the markings Trump was told the classification had been reduced.” To make such arguments they would want to trace each document’s history hoping for at least one miracle that tracks with what I’ve just written. Plus, Trump’s lawyers need to know just how deep the shiite he’s in actually is. Trump? He just wants to get his hands on the stuff and try to make copies, if only pics taken on his cell phone. In a true govt. controlled SCIF he’d not be allowed to have a phone or other device to pull a stunt like that, which is why he wanted to have his own half-a$$ed SCIF at his own property.
Interesting, at least the Turd with a capitol “T”, has been still breathing, so perhaps he WILL live long enough to face one-or-more Judges in REAL COURT functions, with luck, WE WILL be direct witness via video coverage, and hopefully, clear audio as well, his whimpering and sudden intakes of air as he hears how many years he has to be alone, without his beloved phone, tritylating possibilities exist … Trump’s built-up heel lifts, can’t keep him above the law, where he has thought he was prior to Mr. Smith, and now interjection nightmares from a bought and paid for Judge … SO painful, Trump won’t even have time to say OUCH!! 🙂
The next thump we hear, MAY be an orange-colored shitgibbon, falling squarely on his face, a possible improvement to such an ugly accident of Nature …
His “lawyers” will file a notice of intent to appeal. 🙂
I expect this is less a case of cannon doing her f*cking job and more of her superiors (next court up) telling her just how short her leash is. She’s proven she is woefully inadequate in legal knowledge so expecting her to actually know what her job is as a federal judge is just silly.