Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The wheels of justice keep grinding slowly. After dramatic hearings that further delayed a Georgia trial, a judge said that Fani Willis and her office can stay on Donald Trump’s case — but only if her special prosecutor and former romantic partner Nathan Wade steps down. Meanwhile, Judge Aileen Cannon held an unnecessary hearing in Florida, and the New York case that actually looked like it was going to trial on time has caught the delay bug.
Judge Scott McAfee criticized Willis’ conduct, but he agreed that she can stay on the election interference case in Fulton County. The judge said Friday that the defense didn’t prove an actual conflict of interest stemming from her hiring of Wade. But he found an appearance of impropriety that would require that either Willis and her office step down — which would require reassignment to another office — or Wade withdraw. Wade resigned on Friday, so Willis and her office will stay on the case, absent any successful defense appeal of McAfee’s order.
In neighboring Florida, Cannon held a hearing on two issues that she could have just rejected outright. Instead, the Trump appointee set aside Thursday for the defense to argue that the classified documents case should be dismissed on dubious legal grounds. The former president’s lawyers argued that the Presidential Records Act and supposed vagueness in the charges should bar his prosecution. Cannon actually denied the vagueness bid in a brief order after the hearing. But MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann explained that it wasn’t really a win for special counsel Jack Smith, because the way she ruled lets the defense raise the point again later on. There are still several issues in the case to resolve ahead of trial — which the judge hasn’t even calendared yet.
The New York criminal trial was supposed to start March 25, but that hush money case now is headed for some delay as well. In a surprise twist on Thursday, we learned that federal prosecutors only recently made discovery materials available related to Michael Cohen, a central witness in the state prosecution. On Friday, the judge presiding over the case, Juan Merchan, said he’s adjourning the trial for 30 days from Friday and is going to hold a hearing on the discovery issue March 25. He said he’ll set a new trial date if necessary after the hearing.
Speaking of waiting, Supreme Court argument on Trump’s immunity claim in the federal election interference case is more than a month away — April 25. In the meantime, the justices are going about their usual business. On Friday, they rejected a request from an LGBTQ student group that wanted to host a drag show at West Texas A&M University. No justices dissented from the order letting the school maintain its drag ban.
The court also issued decisions in cases argued earlier this term, including a sentencing ruling Friday with an interesting 6-3 split. Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch is more likely than his other GOP colleagues to side with criminal defendants, and so it was here. He wrote the dissent to Obama appointee Elena Kagan’s ruling for the government. She was joined by the other five Republican appointees, while her fellow Democratic-appointed colleagues Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Gorsuch in lamenting that “thousands more people in the federal justice system will be denied a chance — just a chance — at an individualized sentence.” The justices are back on the bench Monday to kick off the two-week March argument sitting, featuring the crucial March 26 hearing on the fate of mifepristone access. Have any questions or comments for me? I’d love to hear from you! Please email deadlinelegal@nbcuni.com for a chance to be featured in a future newsletter.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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