Judge Canon dismisses classified doc case
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I suspect Judge Merchan's butt is working buttonholes about right now.
He knows he's going to be overturned. The lawfare strategy has not worked. He - and every other New York pol - knows he is about to royally piss off the most likely future POTUS.
In light of the recent SCOTUS ruling, he has an out. A face-saving out, for both Bragg and he.
Wonder if he has the sense to take it?
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Six, two, and even the 11th circuit overrules.
She overstepped her bounds.
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."
-Cormac McCarthy -
@jon-nyc said in Judge Canon dismisses classified doc case:
She overstepped her bounds.
McCarthy:
While taken aback by the timing, I was not surprised by the ruling (having anticipated it here and here). I have to caveat, though, that Judge Cannon went further than I thought she would. That is, I was convinced she would (and should) hold that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith violated the appointments clause; but I also figured she would give the Justice Department an opportunity (a) to cure the constitutional defect (which, as I explained yesterday, Garland could easily have done), and (b) salvage the indictment and the enormous amount of pretrial work done in the case since it was indicted over 13 months ago.
Because they’ve insisted on a counterproductive appeal rather than accepting the ruling and curing the defect, I’ve contended that Garland and the Biden Justice Department are being arrogant. I didn’t account for the half of it. Judge Cannon wanted prosecutors to propose an alternative to outright dismissal of the case. They mulishly refused to do it, calculating that the judge would flinch from ruling against them if that meant throwing out the entire case — including all the work Cannon herself had devoted to it.
Garland and Smith have opted to appeal — an appeal that will take a year or more and that DOJ will probably lose. They can’t bring themselves to make no-brainer, no-heavy-lifting adjustments that could rapidly get the case up and running again. Basically, all Garland would need to do is place Smith and his staff under the supervision of a Biden-appointed district U.S. attorney (most likely, in the Southern District of Florida). The AG won’t do it, though, because (1) it would imply that Cannon’s ruling has persuasive force (which it plainly does), and (2) politically, it would eviscerate the illusion Garland’s unnecessary appointment of Smith was intended to create, namely, that the Biden Justice Department is uninvolved in the prosecution of Biden’s opponent in the presidential election.
It is easy to see the logic that calls for outright dismissal of the case: If Smith’s appointment was ultra vires, then everything he has done since being appointed, including indicting the case, is tainted — end of story.
But is it really that open-and-shut? No. Team Trump came to the appointments-clause issue very late in the game, after eight months of making no objections and treating Smith — in not one but two cases — as if he were the government’s legitimate prosecutor.
