As Donald Trump confronts dozens of felony counts across multiple jurisdictions, the classified documents case stands out for a reason: It’s the toughest to defend. Last summer, even a Senate Republican was willing to concede the case looked like a “slam dunk” for prosecutors.
With this in mind, the former president and his defense attorneys, desperate to avoid a conviction, have pushed one priority above all others: Team Trump, from the outset, has tried to delay the proceedings to prevent a trial from taking place before Election Day 2024.
In order to pull that off, the Republican and his lawyers would need an accommodating and sympathetic judge, who would be willing to sacrifice her reputation and who would needlessly drag out the process in order to make a pre-election trial nearly impossible. It’s against this backdrop that The New York Times reported:
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case formally scrapped her own May 20 start date for the trial on Tuesday but declined to set a new one, saying there was much more work to be done before a jury could hear the charges. The decision by Judge Aileen M. Cannon to delay the start of the trial was more or less a foregone conclusion given the number of legal issues that remain unresolved less than two weeks from the date she had originally set.
The Times’ report added that while Cannon’s “stated reason for putting off the trial indefinitely was that a large number of legal issues remain up in the air, she never mentioned that she herself helped allow the logjam of motions to pile up.”
These developments came one day after Cannon reversed one of her earlier decisions and postponed a key filing deadline. It led the Times to note that Cannon — who was tapped by the federal bench by Trump and confirmed by Senate Republicans after Trump lost his re-election bid — has repeatedly “treated seriously arguments that many, if not most, federal judges would have rejected out of hand. Often, her acceptance of Mr. Trump’s unorthodox claims have resulted in significant delays in bringing the charges in the classified documents case in front of a jury.”
In the recent past, the classified documents case was expected to be the first to go to trial. Thanks to Cannon, no one can say with confidence when — or by some measures, if — the case will proceed.
Before reaching this point, the conservative jurist has thrown so many roadblocks at prosecutors that outside attorneys, legal experts and even former judges have struggled to understand and/or defend Cannon’s tactics.
Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge, told The Washington Post in March, in reference to Cannon, “What she has asked the parties to do is very, very troubling. She is giving credence to arguments that are on their face absurd. She is ignoring a raft of other motions, equally absurd, that are unreasonably delaying the case.” At some level, Cannon must realize that her tactics have been so brazen that she’s doing permanent harm to her credibility and lighting her reputation on fire. And yet the judge, after having seen the evidence against the president who appointed her, seems indifferent to appearances. Or put another way, Cannon’s standing will never be the same — and she doesn’t seem to care. Roy Cohn was known for saying, “Don’t tell me what the law is, tell me who the judge is.” The relevance of that quote lingers for a reason.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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