Tag Archives: espionage act

Judge to go ‘on trial’?

The relationship between a federal judge and a former U.S. president is far too complicated for my feeble mind to comprehend.

I’ll try to sort it out anyway.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is presiding over the pending trial involving Donald Trump’s pilfering of classified documents from the White House. Trump nominated Cannon to her federal judicial seat. That’s one element.

Trump has filed a petition asking that Cannon delay the trial until after the November 2024 presidential election. His filing in the court actually declares that the judge should do his bidding, which by itself isn’t necessarily Earth-shattering. What gives the declaration its heft is that it comes from an ex-POTUS who has been indicted for the first time in history by the very same Justice Department he once took an oath to protect.

OK, what does Judge Cannon do? Does she go along with Trump’s demand for an indefinite postponement? Or does she set a trial date and hold firm?

Cannon is under no specific obligation to do as Trump demands. However, she is a human being who — just like the rest of us — doesn’t like the barrage of criticism she is sure to face if she grants Trump’s demand for a postponement.

Cannon set an Aug. 14 trial date after Trump was indicted. Special counsel Jack Smith asked for a delay until December; Cannon granted that request.

Trump is certain to play the delay game as a ploy to cast doubt on witnesses’ memory. The longer we wait, the foggier those memories become. Smith, on the other hand, is vowing a “speedy trial.”

I want a speedy trial. I do not want Trump to delay this proceeding into oblivion. I also want Judge Cannon to set a firm trial date and stand her ground.

This case has made history already in ways we haven’t yet been able to calculate.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Trump has lost it … period!

It’s now painfully obvious — at least it is to me — that the longer Donald Trump is away from the seat of power the more unhinged and, frankly, certifiably loony he has become.

The latest example occurred Wednesday night on the Fox News Channel when he told the host Sean Hannity how he (Trump) could declassify documents marked “top secret.”

How would he do it? Trump said all he had to do was “think it.” That’s right. Just “think” that the documents were OK to be stored in an unsecured location in his Florida digs. Therefore, just like that, it’s OK.

Wow!

At issue, of course, are the documents Trump took with him from the White House to his Florida home when he left office on Jan. 20, 2021. Trump has said the belong to him. He refused numerous requests to turn them over. He ignored previous court orders to comply. So, the FBI did what it had to do: It sought a search warrant from a federal judge, who granted it, and the feds went into Trump’s mansion and collected the classified documents Trump was hiding.

But … no, he cannot “think” his way toward declassifying these papers. There’s a laborious process presidents must use. Trump didn’t do that.

He took national security secrets with him to Florida and … well, he kept ’em.

The man needs to be locked up.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Special master proving, well … he’s OK

Donald Trump’s insistence on the appointment of a “special master” to oversee the seizure of those classified documents at his Florida mansion was a troublesome event, to be sure.

Then a remarkable thing happened. The former president’s legal team and the U.S. Justice Department settled on a fellow with impeccable legal credentials. They both supported the appointment of senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie as special master.

Then another astonishing event occurred just yesterday. Judge Dearie — first appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan — began exposing glaring weakness in Trump’s assertion of “executive privilege” in spiriting those documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.

What do you know about that? A man thought to be a possible Trump toadie is turning into, um, someone who takes the rule of law seriously.

Mar-a-Lago: Trump Push for Special Master Appears to Be Backfiring (businessinsider.com)

Dearie is hearing evidence about whether Trump ever de-classified any of the documents. There appears to be zero evidence that Trump did anything of the sort and Dearie appears to be wise to that reality … and is acting accordingly.

This isn’t my original thought, but I’ll buy into the notion that Trump’s gamble about getting a special master to handle this case is blowing up in his overfed face.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Equal justice? Hah!

Donald J. Trump is supposed to be subject to the same standards as every U.S. citizen now that he no longer is president of the United States.

Isn’t that the rule? Isn’t that what Attorney General Merrick Garland has implied all along while stipulating that “no one is above the law”?

Former Defense Secretary William Cohen, though, has a different take on it. Cohen, who served as defense boss during the Clinton administration, said today that had he taken the documents now believed to have been found among the cache of papers in Trump’s home that he would have been arrested on the spot and taken into custody.

Which begs the question: If Donald Trump now is just an ordinary citizen of this country and has been found to have taken highly classified documents home with him as he left the White House for keeps, why hasn’t he been arrested and charged with, oh, violating the Presidential Records Act or the Espionage Act?

Former Secretary of Defense walks through what would happen to him if he took the documents Trump did (msn.com)

I am acutely aware that all of that would take us down a path on which we have never walked. However, it does appear to be more than just scuttlebutt that Trump had in his possession documents containing — gulp! — nuclear secrets.

What in the name of MADness was Trump going to do with this stuff?

This brings me to another question: Is Donald Trump ever going to be treated like any schmuck who takes official documents illegally?

Allow me to borrow this phrase: Lock him up!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Trump’s life is getting more miserable

Even from out here in the Peanut Gallery, the picture of Donald Trump’s life beyond the presidency is looking very grim.

The Justice Department today ordered the release of the heavily redacted affidavit that prompted the FBI to enter Trump’s home in Florida. We cannot see a lot of what’s in there, but this much appears to have surfaced from the murky, muddy and slimy sequence of events:

The feds had ample reason to look for classified documents that Trump took with him when he vacated the White House in January 2021. 

I am beginning to pick up the scent of indictments in Trump’s future. Obstruction of justice is coming to mind. So is violation of the Espionage Act. Same for violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The steamy, hot breath of the law is beginning to pant heavily down Trump’s neck.

The very last person anyone on this good Earth would want to be at this moment is Donald John Trump.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Judge to unseal part of affidavit?

Call me surprised that the magistrate judge who issued the search warrant to allow FBI agents to look for evidence in Donald Trump’s home has indicated he will unseal part of the affidavit the feds produced to persuade him to act.

I thought he should keep the affidavit secret, that it would jeopardize the investigation into whether Trump broke any laws when he squirreled classified documents away from the White House.

Right wingers, along with Trump, argued that the judge, Bruce Reinhart, unseal all of it in the name of total transparency.

He appears to be splitting the difference.

Trump’s legal woes enter yet another protracted phase – POLITICO

My hope going forward is that the Justice Department will be able to continue in its pursuit of the truth behind the 1/ 6 insurrection; so will the House select committee examining that assault on our democracy … at Trump’s behest.

This is a hyper-sensitive case that needs, in my view, hyper-sensitive eyes and ears that protect the evidence against those who could use it against the government’s pursuit of the truth.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com