Monday, July 15, 2024

Cross your fingers



https://x.com/NormEisen/status/1812855922957422821/history







Don't hold your breath that Trump will ever be held accountable.


I think she may be right.  I thought she'd stall a little longer before dismissing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12:44 pm:







Here's the more harrowing thought, as mentioned in the piece by Elie Mystal below:  They could put her on the 11th Circuit, thereby diluting the bench that has stood now as a check on her Trump favoritism.



UPDATE 04:42 pm:
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court proved that it valued Trump over the rule of law when it granted him absolute immunity. Today, Aileen Cannon proved that she values Trump over the rule of law when she dismissed the charges against him. The rule of law is not failing, it has failed.

[...]

The authority of special counsels has been challenged by countless defendants across multiple presidential administrations from the case before—from Ronald Reagan’s to Bill Clinton’s. But courts have roundly rejected these challenges on the basis that the power to appoint special counsels is widely recognized by statutes and precedent. Until now, that is.

[...]

Federalist Society judges generally and Trump appointed judges specifically are not serious people. They don’t give a damn about what the rules have been or should be. The only laws, precedents, and norms they believe in are the ones that help them achieve their current political goals. [...] Trump judges understand that judges make the rules, and they consistently act like it.

[...]

Trump was going to escape these charges the moment Cannon was appointed as his judge, and everybody who has an honest understanding of what Trump judges do for a living knew it.

[...]

Her job is secure unless someone can find a majority of votes in the House and 67 votes in the Senate to impeach and convict her. So long as the Republicans she aides hold any shred of power, getting fired from her job is not something that Cannon ever has to worry about.

[...]

Jack Smith, of course, has no choice but to play the losing hand he’s been dealt to the bitter end. As to how he does that, he has two options. First and most likely, he can appeal Cannon’s dismissal to the 11th Circuit. The circuit court will likely stay the dismissal pending a full hearing on the merits, at which point Trump’s lawyers will appeal the 11th Circuit ruling to the Supreme Court. There, six judges who have already declared Trump immune from accountability for official acts while president will have to determine if their fear of Trump being held accountable for crimes he committed after he was president is so great that they need to functionally destroy the special counsel rule in order to get him off once again. Of course, all of those determinations will happen after the election, and if Trump wins that election, the whole issue becomes moot anyway.

[...]

If you take Garland at his word and believe that he appointed Smith to avoid the political optics of a presidential cabinet member prosecuting a case against their administration’s defeated rival, those optics are probably even worse now, as Trump is about to be nominated by his party, and the case has no chance of being resolved before the next election. All of which means that Garland is unlikely to take the case under his own authority, even though that is the most expedient and effective legal move.

[...]

It is worth noting that the desire to appear apolitical is what pushed Garland to appoint a special counsel, which then opened the legal door for a partisan hack judge to make a political ruling focused on that appointment, instead of the underlying case. Maybe the next time Democrats hold power (if there is a next time) they could, I don’t know, do what is right instead of worrying about the political optics of it all?

  Elie Mystal @ The Nation
That would take some other party.  The Democrats are constitutionally incapable.
[T]he real failure of Democratic Party leadership, and most left-of-center folks, in the Trump era has been the unsupported belief that the institutions and especially the courts can and would hold.

That was simply never going to be the case. Institutions cannot work if only one side agrees to be bound by them.

[...]

Once again, Trump has won his battle against accountability, and the people telling you otherwise are selling you something (and probably asking for you to donate money to their campaigns).
Going to the 11th. This will at least be interesting.


UPDATE 08:28 pm:


Sadly, it won't matter.  These guys don't mind being hypocritical.

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