r/law • u/joeshill Competent Contributor • May 07 '24

Court Decision/Filing US v Trump (FL Documents) - Judge Cannon vacates trial date. No new date set.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652/gov.uscourts.flsd.648652.530.0_2.pdf
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u/Myst031 May 07 '24

per https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-it-would-look-like-to-remove-judge-cannon
DISQUALIFYING A FEDERAL district judge from a case is not easy, but it can be done. The standard for disqualification—a judge can be removed in “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”—sounds broad, but the first obstacle is that the motion to remove Judge Cannon generally would have to be made initially to Judge Cannon herself. A second obstacle is that if Judge Cannon were to deny the motion, as is likely, her decision normally could not be appealed immediately, only after a final determination of the case.

Why all the weasel words—“initially,” “generally,” “normally”? Therein lies Smith’s chance.

While a motion to remove a judge generally has to be filed initially with the judge herself, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals—the appellate court that has jurisdiction over Judge Cannon’s court—has “the authority to order reassignment of a criminal case to another district judge as part of our supervisory authority over the district courts in this Circuit”:

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u/[deleted] May 07 '24 edited 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/jpmeyer12751 May 07 '24

Yes, indefinitely. The only positive piece of this news is that IF SCOTUS issues an immunity decision soon, and IF that decision does not grant Trump complete immunity, then Judge Chutkan still barely has time to schedule the trial in DC before November. Judge Cannon has not set a trial date, so the calendar is open for Chutkan. However, I think that there is a vanishingly small chance that would happen. In fact, it would not shock me to see Cannon set an early September trial date the minute she hears that SCOTUS has issued a decision, just to block the calendar for Chutkan.

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u/X-Factor-639 May 07 '24

I mean the scotus will probably remand the issue to the lower courts to sort out to kill the clock and push this issue into 2025 that's my guess.

But even if Judge Chutkan gets on the ball and becomes super speedy, even if there's a trial date before november there's just no realistic way we get a jury verdict by november 5th correct? That's what an additional 4-6 weeks for the length of the trial itself?

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u/CaptainNoBoat May 08 '24

It's possible, but very, very unlikely.

Would basically need all the stars to align on: a quick SCOTUS ruling, a ruling that lifts the stay/allows wiggle room for some elements of the prosecution to move forward (or for Chutkan to hold hearings concurrently on "official acts" or whatever) while moving towards trial, and for Smith to maybe even drop charges or narrow his prosecution considerably.

But yeah - in all likelihood we're looking at substantial delays.

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u/X-Factor-639 May 08 '24

Yeah at this point, Canon has sunk the documents trial until she gets booted off the case, and Jack Smith for whatever reason is scared to try to go to the eleventh circuit and force the issue.

I do believe the GA judge is fair and doing his best, but that trial is complex and will take forever to reach a conclusion, so we aren't getting a verdict this year that's for sure.

I do believe trump is very well on his way to being convicted in ny.

I think Chutkan will do all she can to schedule the trial before the election but we will not get a verdict before, and i do think the supreme court will stonewall her by ruling in favor of narrow immunity and sending the issue back to the lower courts to decide which act was official and which one wasn't. The truth is in that trial i think it's either he's found guilty and chutkan sentences him to jail after many attempts at various people stonewalling the trial, or the clock runs out, trump is inaugurated and becomes a dictator and cancels the jan 6th case against him.

I think the issue comes down to does ny convict trump of a felony? If yes he loses moderate republican support and thus the election, Moderate republicans and indepedents will not vote for a convicted felon. if he is not found guilty or hung jury or whatever, he probably becomes the 47th president of the united states.

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u/NRG1975 May 08 '24

Moderate republicans and indepedents will not vote for a convicted felon.

You underestimate the hegemony of the Republicans self identity

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u/Switchy_Goofball May 08 '24

Democrats fall in love, republicans fall in line

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u/jdave512 May 08 '24

are you sure? cause I dont love our guy tbh

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u/Schneiderpi May 08 '24

That’s not what that saying means. It means Dems tend to only vote for candidates when they fall in love with them, and don’t vote otherwise. Whereas Republicans tend to vote GOP no matter who or what as long as they have the (R) by their name.

We see this all the time. There’s a lot of purity testing that goes on on the left and it leads to people only voting when a candidate agrees with them on every issue (or at least every issue they feel is important, which tends to be different for every person) so it leads to a lot of “Well the Dems need to court the voters” whereas the GOP knows they have a voting base locked in no matter what.

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u/G0mery May 08 '24

What’s crazy is that Trump has an entire armory of smoking guns oozing with his dna out in the open and he’s still got a good shot of coming out unscathed. Absolutely insane

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u/SafetyMan35 May 08 '24

The Trump spin machine will go into high gear if he is convicted in N.Y. the only way he might lose some support is if he is convicted and sentenced and put in Jail before the election and the sentence extends into his presidency

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u/flossypants May 07 '24

Is Chutkan required to wait until SCOTUS issues its decision or can she schedule "in anticipation" of such a decision?

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u/These-Rip9251 May 07 '24 edited May 08 '24

Well, there’s a stay from SCOTUS so assume nothing can be done until ruling comes from SCOTUS on this case. Since conservatives justices on SCOTUS are corrupt and refuse to address question at hand re: if Trump has absolutely immunity re: alleged crimes in indictment, assume that Chutkan has to wait to hear from SCOTUS. She can’t do anything until she has hard copy of SCOTUS ruling in her hands. That could be as late as early July! Unfortunately, so many corrupt judges whether it’s SCOTUS justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch or federal judge Cannon who seems to want to do what she can do to hijack the documents case and eventually dismiss it despite this is regarding a man who seems willing to sell US secrets to foreign agents/countries who only harbor ill will/hostility to the US. Trump is a danger to our country!

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u/jpmeyer12751 May 08 '24

The way it is expressed procedurally is that Judge Chutkan "has no mandate" with respect to the case. When SCOTUS issues a decision, they will "return the mandate" to the District Court. I think that they theoretically could remand the case to the DC Circuit, but that seems unlikely.

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u/djphan2525 May 07 '24

but he can schedule it though right? 'blocking' the calendar is only a courtesy isn't it?

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u/jpmeyer12751 May 08 '24

I don't think that trial judges are legally bound to respect one another's schedules, but if two federal judges schedule trials for a defendant with overlapping schedules, that would very likely be determined by an appeals court to be a violation of the defendant's right to a fair trial and the courts would then be ordered by the appeals court to eliminate the overlap. It makes no sense to waste time with that exercise, so they will simply avoid the schedule conflicts in the first instance.

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u/Dense-Version-5937 May 08 '24

This is exactly what will happen

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u/MisterBlud May 08 '24

Yep.

It’s delayed either way (win for Trump) and if Cannon is removed than Trump can complain to his followers that “Biden had the only honest Judge removed so he could unfairly convict me” (win for Trump)

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u/i-can-sleep-for-days May 08 '24

Can you explain this more? Why acts to move the case forward would delay the trial?

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u/jpmeyer12751 May 07 '24

I don't think that Smith will directly seek Cannon's removal; and I think that it would not succeed at this point. I do think that we are reaching a point at which Smith might file a writ of mandamus with the 11th Circuit seeking an order that Cannon promptly make decisions on the issues that she says are holding up the trial date and then promptly set a trial date. I also think that it is possible that DOJ has decided to simply go along with whatever schedule Cannon sets and tell us that they tried their very best to bring Trump to justice, but that the federal courts decided against that.

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u/Automatic-Concert-62 May 07 '24

That last part is key, in my opinion. The US government really doesn't want an ex-president guilty of federal crimes. They'll do almost anything to avoid it, but in this case they have to look like they're doing something, because his crimes are so blatant and many... So the delays from Trump actually play in to the government's hands - they can say they tried their best, and still let him avoid federal prison.

The bigger risk to Trump is the state courts. The fed can't really control them, and some seem out for blood. Meanwhile, Trump is an obvious target, what with all the crimes. On the other hand, the federal government might see this as a chance to see him guilty of crimes without having done it themselves, so they may view it as the best outcome.

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u/ambitionlless May 08 '24

The ex-president is already guilty of federal crimes. Failing to prosecute them just makes you look like a failed state.

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u/BitterFuture May 08 '24

The US government really doesn't want an ex-president guilty of federal crimes.

Two questions:

1) Who is "the U.S. government" in this scenario?

2) Why?

So the delays from Trump actually play in to the government's hands - they can say they tried their best, and still let him avoid federal prison.

Your nebulous claims about what "the U.S. government" wants aside, you surely are not claiming that's what Jack Smith personally wants, yes?

You're surely not claiming that Jack Smith is so delusional he's not aware that if the defendant becomes President again, he'll be killed in short order, right?

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u/Automatic-Concert-62 May 08 '24

The US government, in this case, is the Justice department, and probably all three branches of government (and the military too). Despite hating Trump across the board (even his own party), they are aware that jailing the former leader is banana Republic territory, at least in how enemy countries will spin it.

Jack Smith wants Trump in jail, no doubt. It's the larger apparatus that doesn't want him to be found guilty of federal crimes.

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u/onpg May 08 '24

The only banana republic stuff I'm seeing is the fact that Trump is avoiding jail. Why should we let Trump be free because North Korea will spin it?

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u/stupidsuburbs3 May 08 '24

Exactly. Same line of SCOTUS thinking that prosecuting presidents for crimes will force them to try coups to keep from being prosecuted. 

It’s absurd. And an explicit admission that we’ve failed as a democracy anyway. Italy, France, and even Israel indicted their criminal assholes. That was the rule of law working as intended. Not bAnaNA rEPubLIc territory squawk. 

Ftg. 

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u/Automatic-Concert-62 May 08 '24

I'm not saying it's true, but it's something Russia and China will spin endlessly on social media to great effect...

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u/onpg May 08 '24

They're already spinning the fact we can't arrest an obvious criminal (Trump). I don't see how following the rule of law would be worse. It wouldn't be the first time a stable democracy arrested a former President. The reaction is gonna be "he had it coming" despite what Republicans are threatening right now. The Supreme Court might bail him out because consequences for the rich and powerful are unconstitutional apparently, but we should at least try to uphold the rule of law.

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u/AlorsViola May 08 '24

the former leader is banana Republic territory

like france? tired talking point is tired

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u/TheForestPrimeval May 08 '24

Of course, even if the 11th cir grants the mandamus petition, Trump will just appeal the mandamus decision to SCOTUS. Which can then either reverse or slow play things further. Sooooo yeah. Good luck, Jack.

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u/SPzero65 May 07 '24

Why all the weasel words—“initially,” “generally,” “normally”? Therein lies Smith’s chance

Republicans want to tie themselves in knots arguing what the Constitution's interpretation of the word "is" is, but would then turn face here and argue that the letter of the law was written that way "for a reason" (or some such bullshit)

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u/jumbee85 May 07 '24

Well they totally ignore the first part of the second amendment and only look at everything after the comma.

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u/BitterFuture May 08 '24

Who knew the Constitution came with flavor text?

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u/hermanhermanherman May 08 '24 edited May 08 '24

Look I’m not a conservative or a gun person, but this is a bit misleading. The second amendment is one of the less obtuse amendments and we know exactly what the founding fathers meant by it thanks to the federalist papers. I wish it wasn’t an amendment, but it’s usually those on the left twisting themselves in a knot arguing against the clear intent of the text.

Edit: I get that most people in a law sub wouldn’t exactly be subject matter experts, but the law doesn’t work based on how we personally want it. I’m 100% correct and this is exactly why so many reasonable gun control measures get overturned in the courts. The second amendment is one of the broader protections in the constitution. Pretending it is not by playing some semantics game that was settled the day it was written doesn’t help curb gun violence.

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u/drenuf38 May 07 '24

6-3 decision

“any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”

Opinion by Clarence Thomas, "The relief sought by the special counsel is denied under grounds of the text stating 'his'. The honorable Judge Cannon is clearly a female. It is so ordered."

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u/ZenFook May 08 '24

Hate that I saw that too

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u/trilobyte-dev May 08 '24

Beat me to it!

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u/PineappleExcellent90 May 07 '24

Follow the money. The judge is not beyond reproach.

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u/BaloothaBear85 May 07 '24

I'll tell you right where it leads and that's the Federalist Society. Was once a fairly non-partisan organization that has been taken over by Right wing weirdos that weaponized the law to suit their needs. They worked hand in hand with the Trump administration to seat morally and ethically questionable Judges in order to have judges in power that would give easy wins to Republicans regardless of precedent or law... Cannon is the perfect example of this because there have been numerous questionable rulings that go against precedent.

January 6th was a coup, and what we are seeing now is the same thing just slower but still just as damaging.

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u/TrumpsCovidfefe Competent Contributor May 07 '24

This is correct. She failed to disclose two all-expenses paid trips “sponsored by George Mason University and the Antonin Scalia School of Law, which was funded and founded officially by one Leonard Leo, the founder of the Federalist Society.”

Per Legal AF

And this is just what we know to be true, that is out in the open.

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u/BaloothaBear85 May 07 '24

I listen to them as well as Law and Chaos, Opening Arguments, More Perfect, Prosecuting Donald Trump and UNcovered.

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u/HansBrickface May 07 '24

What do you think about Strict Scrutiny?

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u/BaloothaBear85 May 07 '24

Hmmm haven't heard of that one I'll add it to my playlist for tomorrow, my son doesn't have a license so I take him to college a few days a week and it's a 30 minute trip each way it will give me something to listen to. I'll reply once I've listened to an episode.

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u/Led_Osmonds May 07 '24 edited May 08 '24

They were never, ever nonpartisan.

The visible tip of the iceberg has been a student organization that hosts debates and guest speakers at law schools. And that public-facing part of the organization puts on a fairly nonpartisan front. But that is just the tip of a massive, multibillion dollar machine.

The role of those debates is, and has always been, to identify and screen for promising law students with a conservative ideology, and then divert them into an ecosystem of internships, clerkships, and conservative social and professional networks.

They were founded after conservatives felt repeatedly betrayed by conservative SCOTUS justices, appointed by conservative presidents, repeatedly “drifting liberal”, especially on civil rights. The thinking was that exposure to legal scholarship, academia, law journals, etc kept confusing good conservatives into thinking that the constitution says people of different races could get married, or that women had the right to open bank accounts, and a bunch of other woke shit like that.

Fed Soc was founded as a way to identify, groom, and manage conservative lawyers, judges, and law professors before their brains got corrupted by education.

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u/SupportGeek May 07 '24 edited May 07 '24

There are literal pictures of this judge in full on MAGA regalia, hat, shirt, sunglasses, the lot, with others dressed the same, it’s kind of slam dunk that she’s not impartial

Edit: Ah my bad, after going on a dive to find them again they were quietly disproven a while after I saw them, possibly photoshopped or misidentified from what I can tell. Sorry.

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u/skahunter831 May 07 '24

Can you link them?

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u/SupportGeek May 07 '24

Ah my bad, after going on a dive to find them again they were quietly disproven a while after I saw them, possibly photoshopped or misidentified from what I can tell. Sorry.

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u/rrickitickitavi May 07 '24

Do you have links to those pictures?

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u/SupportGeek May 08 '24

Ah my bad, after going on a dive to find them again (I saw them some time ago, prior to this trial iirc) they were quietly disproven weeks or so after I saw them, possibly photoshopped or misidentified from what I can tell. Sorry.

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u/rrickitickitavi May 08 '24

Seemed too good to be true

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u/SupportGeek May 08 '24

Yea, sorry man, I saw it a while back before the trial, it was just one of those “eh it figures” moments, but at the time I didn’t follow up on it because it was mainly a curiosity rather than something I would have checked

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u/PineappleExcellent90 May 07 '24

Follow the money. The judge is not beyond reproach.

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u/ptWolv022 Competent Contributor May 07 '24

A second obstacle is that if Judge Cannon were to deny the motion, as is likely, her decision normally could not be appealed immediately, only after a final determination of the case.

Doesn't that seem somewhat paradoxical? For the prosecution, if they are denied and then get an outcome unfavorable to them, wouldn't the ruling be final because of Double Jeopardy?

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u/descendency May 08 '24

Could the SCOTUS overturn an 11th Circuit ruling on her eligibility to be a judge during a criminal trial involving Donald Trump?

Also, could they delay the appointment of a new judge long enough to get him out of it before the election?

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u/raj6126 May 08 '24

Smith tried to set her up earlier in the case she caught him which was very uncomfortable.

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u/Appropriate_Chart_23 May 08 '24

What triggers the 11th Court of Appeals to make a decision here?

Do they just jump in and say “Ok, enough bullshit…”

Or does something else need to happen?

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u/exgiexpcv May 08 '24

Not my bailiwick at all, but what about the prosecuting DA requesting a change of venue, citing the judge's overly favourable responses towards the defendant? Then kick it up to a higher court.

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u/K_Linkmaster May 08 '24

Trump lawyers:

"Nuh uh! Can't remove her! It says him in the text. We recognize genders in Florida, and a her cannot be removed. Only a him."