Wildly incompetent Judge Aileen Cannon, who’s been acting like a member of Donald J. Trump’s defense team for over a year, has dismissed the US vs. Classified Documents In The Shitter case, claiming that Jack Smith was illegally appointed.
Hey, does this mean Hunter Biden goes free?
In a 93-page batshit opinion, Cannon uses tortured logic to claim the attorney general has no power to appoint a special counsel, and that funding the office isn’t legal. She accuses the special counsel’s office of “linguistic distortion,” then proceeds to arglebargle over the meanings of the words “appoint,” “retain,” “commission” and “special attorney,” because irony is dead and it’s projection all the way down in Trumplandia.
Just look at this bullshit:
For the reasons set forth above, it is ORDERED AND ADJUDGED as follows: 1. Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Superseding Indictment Based on Unlawful Appointment and Funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith is GRANTED in accordance with this Order [ECF No. 326]. 2. The Superseding Indictment [ECF No. 85] is DISMISSED. 3. This Order is confined to this proceeding. The Court decides no other legal rights or claims. 4. This Order shall not affect or weaken any of the protections for classified information imposed in this case or any protective orders pertaining to classified information. 5. The Clerk is directed to CLOSE this case. Any scheduled hearings are CANCELLED. Any pending motions are DENIED AS MOOT, and any pending deadlines are TERMINATED. DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers at Fort Pierce, Florida, this 15th day of July 2024.
Special counsels have been around since 1978, when Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act, inspired by Watergate. Title VI of the act established formal rules for the appointment of a special prosecutor, and the constitutionality of it was upheld by the Supreme Court again in 1988, in Morrison v. Olson. But precedent apparently means nothing anymore.
Also Cannon is a district court judge, her job is to apply precedent, not to decide that SCOTUS has been wrong for more than 40 years, ackshully. And sure seems like deciding on anything regarding the guy who appointed her is a little bit of a conflict of interest. But we are so far out past the norms of anything anymore, this seems silly to even mention.
The good news is that the decision came before the case got to a jury, so it can be appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has overruled Cannon and her bullshit before. If the 11th Circuit agrees that this is, in fact, some bullshit, maybe it will be assigned to a normal judge who hasn’t been drinking Trump’s dirty bathwater. The bad news is that even if the 11th Circuit agrees that this is some crazy bullshit, the case will be delayed even more. And if the 11th Circuit agrees, that decision could be appealed up to the Supreme Court, and who the fuck knows what they’re thinking these days.
For this opus of guano, Cannon apparently picked right up on the birdseed that Justice Clarence Thomas was throwing down in his concurrence for Trump Can Shoot Everybody On 5th Avenue vs. No:
I write separately to highlight another way in which this prosecution may violate our constitutional structure. In this case, the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States. But, I am not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been “established by Law,” as the Constitution requires.
Conservatives have balked at special counsels for a while, because they buy into the “unitary executive theory,” AKA the president is a king who can do whatever the fuck he (or she, LOL) wants. Justice Antonin Scalia was bitching about them back in 1988 in his dissent in Olsen. His ghost is surely happy now, as it roams the luxury Cibolo Creek Ranch, where he died on a trip with expenses paid by a guy who owned a company with business before the court.
If you want to refresh your memory of all the stupid things Judge Aileen Cannon has done, here you go:
Trump is thrilled, of course, in his perpetually-angry sort of way. And at least now we at the words factory don’t have to think about this woman ever again? Until Trump appoints her to SCOTUS after he locks up the three liberal justices in GITMO?
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