Tomorrow’s Legal Daily Double

You can get farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word   Al Capone

The problem for Don Cornholeone and The Gang That Couldn’t Sh*t Straight is that they’re trying to escape from custody with a bunch of guns what were whittled out of bars of soap. And the problem is that there aren’t many judges, cops, or guards who have ever seen a .45 that was ivory white out on the streets.

Tomorrow there are two major hearings taking place several hundred miles apart, that are going to have a major effect on the forward progress of the trials in DC and Georgia.

In federal court in northern Georgia tomorrow, Trump former Chief of Staff and all purpose scumbag Mark Meadows will have an evidentiary hearing on his lawyer’s motion to sever Meadows’s case from the others, and have it moved to federal court in the northern district of Georgia. His specious motion is that at the time of the alleged crimes, Meadows was a federal officer, doing his appointed federal duties at the time, and therefore is due a federal court trial.

And in Washington DC tomorrow, Traitor Tot is due in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s court tomorrow for a preliminary hearing, at which time she’ll presumably set up the parameters for the discovery process, and at which time she has already promised to name a trial date for the case.

Let’s start with Meadows first. His motion is like a Hail Mary pass from his own two yard line in the first five minutes of the game. According to MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuaid, a former US Attorney in Michigan, that gambit is normally used by federal agents trying to serve a warrant in an operation that gets botched somehow. The logic being that as federal agents, conducting a federal operation, if it goes wrong, they have the right to have their case heard in federal court. 

To be clear, Mark Meadows is not, nor has he ever been a federal agent. He’s a federal disgrace. And I can’t wait to hear his mouthpiece explain where in the federal regulations for a White House Chief of Staff it says that lying to a state Secretary of State as to the number of alleged dead bodies and unregistered voters who voted in the election is part of his job. Ditto with showing up unannounced, and trying to force his way into a secured, confidential ballot recount in Fulton County is within his purview. The only thing that Meadows is accomplishing is begging for charges of violating The Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officers from engaging in political activities while on the job.

My advice is, don’t expect a decision on this motion tomorrow. This is an evidentiary hearing. The judge is going to hear both sides of the argument, make a bunch of harumph-harumph noises, and then take the matter under consideration. No matter how nonsensical the arguments from Meadows, in a case as important as this one, I can’t imagine the judge laughing, and saying Get the f*ck oudda here with that lame shit. He’ll spend a day or two playing Candy Crush in his chambers, and then release a written ruling denying Meadows’s motion.

The Trump hearing tomorrow will be more definitive. In a pre-hearing motion, Special Counsel Jack Smith requested that jury selection begin the week after Christmas, with a jury empaneled and ready for opening arguments on January 2nd. Aggressive, but not out of bounds, especially when considering that there are no security clearance issues for the defense, as there is in the Mar-A-Lago documents case, and since the majority of their discoverable evidence has already been available to the defense since the J6 committee issued their final report, and dumped all of their testimony and evidence that wasn’t classified. One of the most legitimate legal points I’ve heard in a long time.

The Trump team on the other hand? They want the trial to start in April of 2026! This is a shining example of a bunch of lawyers playing to political messaging and Trump’s base, and in the process almost certainly pissing off the judge. Their lame ass excuse is the incredible amount of material to be made available under discovery, ignoring the fact that the majority of it has already been publicly available for almost a year now, as well as quoting, are you ready for this?, the lengthy delays in federal trials during the Covid pandemic! News Flash! The Covid pandemic has been dead for more than a year now!

I’m not the oracle of Delphi, but here’s my best guess. I think that Judge Chutkan will schedule the trial sometime com mid March to early April. That will give plenty of time for proper preparation of representation. But if I’m Jack Smith, I go balls-to-the-wall. Because if Traitor Tot keeps threatening and disparaging the judge, the prosecutors, and the witnesses, I wouldn’t be surprised if she gives Jack Smith his January trial date just to teach His Lowness a lesson. Don’t touch that dial.