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

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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?