Judge Aileen Cannon is planning on holding a sprawling hearing on Donald Trump’s request to declare Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel invalid, signaling the judge could be more willing than any other trial judge to veto the special prosecutor’s authority.

“The issue, now before Cannon in the Southern District of Florida federal court, is likely to remain in the political debate at least until Cannon holds a hearing on the legal power of the special counsel to prosecute a defendant, on June 21.”

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Two things:

    1. Jack Smith has to file a motion to have her removed at this point. I understand that under normal circumstances, you don’t want to piss off the judge. But how much more adversarial can she be at this point? She’s literally trying to have him removed from the case. At this point, Smith has nothing left to lose. What else could she do to him? Have him deported?

    2. This has got to be appealed if/when she rules that he has no authority to prosecute. If she rules that special prosecutors have no authority to bring these cases and that ruling were allowed to stand, wouldn’t it invalidate other cases brought by special prosecutors? Or at the very least give those convicted grounds for having their convictions thrown out?

    • mpa92643@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      The role of a district court judge is to do two things:

      1. Apply existing precedent to individual cases to the greatest extent possible.
      2. Set new precedent only when absolutely necessary because the facts of the case don’t align well to existing precedent.

      Cannon has basically decided to do the exact opposite of these two rules by pretending that the facts of this case are so incredibly unprecedented that she has to throw out the rulebook and set new precedents on everything.

      Literally the only unusual thing about this case is that the defendant, a private citizen who currently gets free government security protection for the rest of his life, used to be a president. That’s it. Everything else about this case is straightforward obstruction of justice and willful retention of national security information.

      • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.comEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        Trump has, in my humble opinion, something on the judge or the judge’s family from his time in the office of the president and access to warrantless wiretapping all US Americans from LEO/CIA/NSA information.

        Trump, in my humble opinion, has found and used private information to flex on the judge.