Loose Cannon Is Corrupt. She’s Stonewalling Justice Not Upholding It

“Taking care of [Trump’s] business, all his crimes, taking care of [Trump’s] business and working overtime.” — slight parody of Bachman-Turner Overdrive

The trail of breadcrumbs is becoming clearer and a pattern is forming. It’s very easy to see where all this is leading. You recall last week’s revelation that Yuscil Tavaras, the head of IT at Mar-a-Lago falsely testified in March and then decided to change his plea. Taveras had been represented by Stan Woodward, who also represents Walt Nauta and Carlos DeOliveira, who are also Trump’s employees. Once Tavaras was made aware of the conflict of interests, he elected to go with independent counsel and to amend his testimony. You don’t need to be Clarence Darrow to realize that one lawyer representing three clients in the same highly charged controversial case is liable to lead to consistent testimony, right? As opposed to honest, unbiased (and uncoached) testimony? This rings of when Cassidy Hutchinson elected to get another lawyer.

Now here’s where Aileen Loose Cannon comes in: she’s far more interested in protecting Stan Woodward’s interest than the interests of justice. Now here’s the bottom line and then you’ll read the analysis that got us here: Nauta and DeOliveira need a conflict review as well. “Judge” Cannon took actions which have resulted in postponing that review for at least a month in Nauta’s case and DeOliveira’s fate is uncertain at this time. That is stonewalling justice. Emptywheel:

Judge Aileen Cannon and Walt Nauta attorney Stan Woodward are engaged in a game that is doing nothing to ensure that Nauta’s getting unconflicted legal representation, but it is protecting Trump’s protection racket.

Let’s review the timeline.

On August 2, DOJ filed their original motion for a Garcia hearing, describing, generally, that Yuscil Taveras had testified against Nauta, which presented a conflict for Woodward, even before you consider the three other possible trial witnesses — of seven remaining witnesses — he also represents. DOJ submitted a sealed supplement with information on those three as well as other information, “to facilitate the Court’s inquiry.” Five days later, Cannon ordered that filing stricken, stating that, the government had, “fail[ed] to satisfy the burden of establishing a sufficient legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement.” In her drawn out briefing schedule on the question, she instructed Stan Woodward to address, “the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district.” [emphasis mine]

On August 17, Woodward responded. He contended that Garcia hearings only covered when an attorney represented two defendants, but ultimately argued that, rather than adopt a more traditional method of resolving such a conflict (such as replacing Woodward), Judge Cannon should exclude Taveras’ testimony. [??]

The government’s reply — filed on August 22 — is the one that made public more, damning, information on what went down in June and July.

Three more days passed before Woodward submitted a furious motion requesting opportunity to file a sur-reply. In it, filed 23 days after DOJ’s original submission and sealed filing, he accused DOJ of contravening, “a sealing order issued by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia,1” though in a rambling footnote, he admitted maybe DOJ had requested to unseal this ex parte.

1. Defense counsel is not currently aware of any application by the government to unseal defense counsel’s submission. To have done so ex parte is arguably less professional than deliberately violating the Court’s sealing order. The government did not solicit defense counsel’s position on the unsealing of defense counsel’s own submission, but appears to have deliberately misled both the District Court for the District of Columbia and this Court. Of course, if they did seek such an application ex parte, this would be the second time in as many weeks that the government has done so – a particularly ironic approach given the Special Counsel’s objection to the Court conducting any ex parte inquiry of Mr. Nauta.

In a fit of Trumpist projection, Woodward also complained that DOJ was doing things that might lead to tampering with witnesses.

2 In the time since the government’s submission, defense counsel has received several threatening and/or disparaging emails and phone calls. This is the result of the Special Counsel’s callous disregard for how their unnecessary actions affect and influence the public and the lives of the individuals involved in this matter. It defies credulity to suggest that it is coincidental that mere minutes after the government’s submission, at least one media outlet was reporting previously undisclosed details that were disclosed needlessly by the government.

Projection, projection, projection.

Well, it worked. Judge Cannon granted Woodward’s motion, even giving him one more day than he asked, until August 31 instead of August 30 (remember that she scheduled a sealed hearing sometime in this timeframe). Which will mean that because of actions taken and inaction by Aileen Cannon, Walt Nauta will go the entire month of August without getting a conflict review. [Emphasis mine]

And yes, it gets worse. On August 16, the DOJ filed a motion for a Garcia hearing to discuss the three witnesses in the classified documents case, represented by the same lawyer, and so far, according to Emptywheel, Judge Cannon has ignored the motion. She can’t do that forever, of course, these things have deadlines. And you want to know what’s really crazy? Todd Blanche also represents Boris Epshteyn in addition to Trump. This is not how the law is supposed to work.

Read the entire article linked to. It is lengthy and detailed and you need to know what’s in it to understand how at the very least Woodward and Cannon are working in grey, fringe areas in doing what they’re doing, if not outright breaking the law. Taveras’ legal fees being paid for by Trump’s PAC, is yet another bone of contention here. It’s common sense that if somebody is paying your legal bills that would tend to sway your testimony in the direction that they would like, correct?

Taveras is only a witness because Trump paid him to do IT work. But for much of the conduct about which Kash [Patel] must have given testimony, represented by Woodward, he was the Acting Chief of Staff at the Pentagon. That’s the period when, per Kash, Trump conducted a wild declassification spree in his last days as President before packing up boxes to move to Mar-a-Lago.

Here’s another interesting point.

…brushing off the financial conflict with Taveras is one thing, but this conflict is also about Nauta. And Nauta is now being prosecuted for conduct that may have begun when American taxpayers were paying him, not Donald Trump. One of the things Nauta may be hiding by not cooperating are details about Trump’s overt intentions as they both packed up boxes.

And look at this.

Judge Cannon just gave Woodward another bite at the apple, as well as another six days before his client gets a Garcia hearing, based off Woodward’s claim that he had never seen information DOJ had shared (and which would have been available to Woodward for five days) but then Cannon herself had removed from the record. DOJ did provide this information in its initial motion. But because of actions Cannon took — the judicial equivalent of flushing that information down the toilet — Woodward (after waiting three days himself before first asking Judge Boasberg to share the information) claimed that he had never seen it before.

…DOJ just revealed that Judge Cannon threw out precisely the information that she’s now using to grant Woodward’s request for a sur-reply and — between the three days he waited to ask and the six she granted him to respond — nine more days to delay such time before Walt Nauta might be told about the significance of all the conflicted representation Woodward has taken on. […]

But I also expect that this will escalate quickly in one or another forum. Aileen Cannon was informed weeks ago of two significant conflicts in the representation of defendants before her, and rather than attend to those conflicts (or decide, simply, that she was going to blow them off, which in some forms might be an appealable decision), she has helped Woodward simply stall any resolution to the potential conflict.

Cannon is on Woodward’s side. Cannon is on Trump’s side. She’s not only on his side, she’s his whore. She is bending the law to accommodate Trump. She is taking care of Trump’s business, just like the song says. No exaggeration there. At the very least she needs to recuse herself and failing that, she needs to be removed from this case. And removing her from the bench wouldn’t be such a bad idea either. She’s a crooked judge from all appearances and she’s made that clear from the outset.