'Circular reasoning at its dumbest': Judge Cannon buried for new 'flailing' Trump ruling
A decision by District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Canon to once again intercede on Donald Trump's behalf received a failing grade from University of Baltimore School of Law professor Kim Wehle on Wednesday.
The Florida judge, who has long been accused of putting her finger on the scale to help the man who awarded her with a lifetime appointment to the bench, stepped in on Tuesday to block release of special counsel Jack Smith final report on the president-elect despite providing no case law to justify her actions.
According to Wehle, Cannon is working in tandem with Trump's lawyers who provided their own "circular reasoning" legal brief that led her to step in where she lacks jurisdiction.
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In a column for the Bulwark, Wehle wrote that Cannon had no business stepping into the fray and her ruling was an act of desperation on both her part and Trump's lawyers.
As she wrote, Cannon already threw out the case on the "ridiculous theory that Special Jack Smith’s appointment ... is unconstitutional," adding afterwards, "What that means is that jurisdiction over the case is no longer with Cannon. It was transferred to the appeals court, so she has no power over the report."
Pointing out that Cannon failed to take into account "Justice Department regulations governing special counsels, which give the attorney general—and not a judge—the authority to decide whether any portion of the report should be released to the public," Whele also noted that Trump's lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, both headed for jobs in the Trump administration, convinced her to intervene.
According to the legal expert, the two lawyers convinced "Cannon to allow Trump to participate as an amicus in his co-defendants’ request for a stay of the Smith report. In that brief, they bizarrely refer to 'private citizen, and so-called Special Counsel, Jack Smith' as having no basis . . . to be spending tax dollars to interfere with the Presidential transition process by making false and presidential claims about President Trump. They cite Cannon’s order dismissing the indictment as the authority for her to use in stopping release of the report."
"This is circular reasoning at its dumbest," Wehle concluded.
Suggesting the end game is merely "delay," she added, "All Trump needs is for the courts to glom up the gears for a dozen more days. Once he has been inaugurated, Smith’s report will meet its fate in the dustbin of history, where it will stay for generations—if not forever."
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