It has been almost exactly 50 years since Richard Nixon resigned
from the presidency. In spite of the fact that the Watergate case was a long
time ago, I thought of it this morning while I was on the treadmill at the gym.
The breaking news on CNN this morning was that judge Aileen
Cannon had dismissed charges against Trump because she said that prosecutor
Jack Smith had been improperly appointed – which is utter nonsense.
Former President
Donald Trump’s confidential documents case was tossed out by a
federal judge in a stunning move in Florida on Monday — eliminating one of his biggest legal liabilities just 113 days
before the Nov. 5 election.
Judge Aileen
Cannon dismissed the case against Trump — a move considered especially
significant because the charges were widely viewed as the most likely to
score a conviction in any of the four cases against him — on the grounds that
the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith to the prosecution violated the
Constitution.
“I am thrilled that a judge had the courage and wisdom to
do this,” Trump told Fox News in an interview moments after the ruling. “This
has big, big implications, not just for this case but for other cases.
“The special
counsel worked with everybody to try to take me down. This is a big, big deal.
It only makes the convention more positive — this will be an amazing week.”
The GOP presidential candidate, 78, faced up to 450 years in
prison if convicted on all counts in the case.
Cannon seemed to
indicate that the Department of Justice is free to appeal her ruling by saying
she was leaving her decision up “for any applicable future review.” It was not
immediately clear whether Smith and his team will do so.
The ruling also
may affect the second federal case against Trump involving the Jan. 6 riots and
his challenging of the results of the 2020 election. Trump’s lawyers could seek
to have the DC case tossed while pointing to Cannon’s decision.
“The Florida
documents case was considered the strongest legal case against Trump because it
did not involve novel theories of law,” said Cornell University Law Professor
William Jacobson to The Post. “For the Florida case to be dismissed is a grave
blow to the government.”
The ex-president
was accused of hoarding troves of confidential documents at
his Mar-a-Lago home after he left office and then attempting to cover it
up.
Cannon ruled that Congress was required to appoint
“constitutional officers” and the legislature was also needed to approve
spending for such a prosecution.
“That role
cannot be usurped by the executive branch or diffused elsewhere — whether in
this case or in another case, whether in times of heightened national need or
not,” Cannon wrote.
The judge wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s investigation
has unlawfully drawn funds from the Indefinite Appropriation.”
“The Special Counsel’s office has spent tens of millions
of dollars since November 2022, all drawn unconstitutionally from the
Indefinite Appropriation,” Cannon wrote.
“For more than
18 months, Special Counsel Smith’s investigation and prosecution has been
financed by substantial funds drawn from the Treasury without statutory
authorization, and to try to rewrite history at this point seems near
impossible. The Court has difficulty seeing how a remedy short of dismissal
would cure this substantial separation-of-powers violation, but the answers are
not entirely self-evident, and the caselaw is not well developed.”
A review of the Watergate case will illustrate why
her ruling is dead wrong.
On
October 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon ordered his Attorney General, Elliott
Richardson, to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox because he
(Cox) was getting too close to the truth about the Watergate scandal.
Rather than comply with the order, Richardson
resigned. Nixon then ordered Richardson’s second-in-command (William
Ruckelshaus) to fire Cox. He, too, resigned rather than carry out the order.
The next highest-ranking member of the Justice
Department after Ruckelshaus was Solicitor General Robert Bork. Although
Bork also felt that Nixon’s decision was unwise, he felt that SOMEBODY had to
comply with Nixon’s order, so he fired Cox.
The morning after “the Saturday Night Massacre”,
the headlines in my local newspaper read “Impeach the Cox-sacker”, and bumper
stickers with the same line appeared soon after. As we all know, Nixon’s
attempt to circumvent justice was not successful, and he was forced to resign
on August 8, 1974.
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/11/impeach-cox-sacker.html
After Cox was fired, he was replaced by Leon Jaworski, who was
nominated by Robert Bork.
On November 1, 1973, Bork announced he selected, and Nixon approved,
Jaworski to replace Cox. Jaworski subsequently subpoenaed sixty-four taped
conversations. Nixon appealed on two grounds: first, that the office of Special
Prosecutor did not have the right to sue the office of President; and second,
that the requested materials were privileged presidential
conversations. Aware that an important constitutional issue was at
stake, and unwilling to wait any longer, Jaworski asked the Supreme Court to
take the case directly, bypassing the Court of Appeals.
(You will notice, of course, that Jaworski’s appointment did not
require any involvement from Congress, which is precisely what judge Cannon is
now suggesting.)
Duration: 7 minutes and 45 seconds.7:
On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that the Special Prosecutor did
have the right to sue the President; and that the "generalized
assertion of [executive] privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific
need for evidence in a pending criminal trial". Nixon was
forced to give the unedited tapes to Jaworski, including the so-called Smoking
Gun Tape which included a compromising discussion of June 23,
1972. The President's remaining support waned, and he resigned on August 9,
1974.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Jaworski
Even if the document case had been decided before the election,
it likely would not have changed the votes of many in the Republican party,
since Trump is ALREADY a convicted felon, but he will more than likely still be
the Republican nominee. Few of the people at the convention, naturally, have any
idea what Project 2025 is – and how it would end our democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
The irony of that nomination is that people who have been convicted of a felon cannot serve in the military, so it is entirely logical to draw the conclusion that a convicted felon should not be the commander in chief.
At this point, Merrick Garland really has no choice but to
appeal judge Cannon’s decision, regardless of hos long it takes. If should be
obvious that Trump should NOT be granted immunity in the documents case since
moving the documents was NOT an official act.
None of us has a clue about how the election will turn out,
but Trump is already fundraising based on the recent assassination attempt. If
he DOES manage to win in November, there are a LOT of people 9 (including me)
who would consider moving to Canada.
This morning, after a day of Republicans insisting that it is political polarization to suggest that Trump is a danger to our democracy, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in the last days of his presidency, dismissed the classified documents case against the former president. She wrote that “Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”
Other federal courts have tested this argument and dismissed it, but Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni was part of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, suggested earlier this month that it could be the basis for getting rid of Jack Smith. Cannon cited Thomas repeatedly in her decision.
In November 2022, after Trump announced his presidential candidacy—an early announcement that many thought was an attempt to avoid criminal prosecution—Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the two federal investigations that touched on the former president, thus deliberately moving those investigations outside the department so they could not be seen as part of the presidential race.
In June 2023 a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 37 criminal counts under the Espionage Act, i
The case fell randomly to Cannon, who has appeared to be trying to delay the case since it came into her hands. Today, she threw it out altogether.
Former attorney general Eric Holder called Cannon’s dismissal “so bereft of legal reasoning as to be utterly absurd.” Legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern called it “an extreme outlier view with no basis in precedent” and noted that “Cannon’s indefensible opinion will still serve its purpose of delaying this trial indefinitely.”
Global politics scholar Brian Klaas wrote “Trump appoints judge. Trump does something that virtually all legal experts—including Trump’s own former Attorney General—see as a clear-cut felony. Judge that Trump appointed dismisses case.” Washington Post global affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor wrote: “if this happened in another country, the DC establishment would immediately point to the erosion of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith has said he will appeal Cannon’s ruling.
Trump responded to the news exactly as yesterday’s Republican demands that Trump’s opponents stop calling out his lawlessness suggested he would. He posted: “As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—the January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to
END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”
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