The colossal systemic failure in the Mar-a-Lago case

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Smith did not call for the removal of Aileen Cannon

The timing was breathtaking.

In July, US District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the charges against Donald Trump for hoarding national security information at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing efforts to recover those materials on Monday after the assassination attempt on the former president on Saturday.

This Monday was also the first day of the Republican National Convention and the day on which Trump announced JD Vance as his vice presidential candidate.

You'd be forgiven if you missed the news from Mar-a-Lago that day.

Yesterday, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed his appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse Cannon's dismissal. It provides a watertight rationale for why both his appointment as special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the funding of his work were lawful. It is also a subtle but devastating deconstruction of Cannon's deeply flawed decision. The only real news was what the appeal did not contain: an explicit request for the appeals court to remove Cannon from the case.

Smith is very likely to prevail in the appeals court, but that victory will not disguise the fundamental systemic and institutional failures to hold Trump legally accountable for his crimes in a way that stops Trump's ongoing threat to national security, gives voters a clear picture of who they are voting for in November, and strengthens public confidence in the ability of the judiciary to function properly in times of crisis.

It is easy to blame Judge Cannon for this debacle, and she deserves all the contempt that is shown her, but no judge should be able to create such chaos in such an important case without being held accountable. While we rightly give considerable power to individual federal judges, the system has shown its limitations, weaknesses, and ineptitude when faced with a case of this magnitude.

Looming over all of these failures is the prospect that Trump could retake the White House and then order the Justice Department to drop the case against him. And as I've mentioned before, he will abuse presidential power to obstruct the judiciary in a variety of other ways, leaving it vulnerable to his autocratic impulses, especially now that the Supreme Court has granted him immunity. Put more simply, Trump poses an existential threat to the judiciary as well, even if it collectively doesn't seem to grasp the risk.

Former CIA lawyer Brian Greer has offered a rough estimate of when the Mar-a-Lago case is likely to go to trial. He estimates that even if Trump loses in November, the trial will not begin until sometime in 2026 or even 2027, roughly five to six years after Trump's alleged criminal conduct. The exact calculation is up for debate, but no calculation realistically leads to a timely trial.

I don't have all the answers to the reforms needed to speed up the administration of justice in cases where structural constitutional issues are at stake, while preserving individual rights and due process. But I do know that blaming a corrupt judge for our national misery is a way to absolve the system of responsibility.

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Look at both of them.

Yes indeed …

The New York Times notes the 5th Circuit's status as the Trump court in the country. It even calls it the most conservative, which everyone agrees on, but that description seems increasingly outdated and inaccurate in the face of a radical right-wing judiciary that is anything but conservative in the classical or legal sense.

Federal judge in Texas blocks Biden's immigration program

As expected, a lawsuit filed late last week by a coalition of red states seeking to block Biden's program that paves the way to citizenship for undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens had an early success when a federal judge in Texas ordered a temporary suspension of the program.

2024 Ephemera

• NYT: “A Latino civil rights group is calling on the Justice Department to launch an investigation into a series of raids on Latino voter activists and political operatives that are part of a broader voter fraud investigation by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
• More than 200 disgruntled Republican alumni of George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney supported Kamala Harris in an open letter published in USA Today.
• Former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard (HI) has endorsed Donald Trump.

UPDATE: Investigations into Trump assassination attempt

• Nine members of the House task force investigating the assassination of former President Trump visited the crime scene on Monday.
• Some of the House GOP's craziest members are conducting their own “parallel” investigation, hosting an event at the Heritage Foundation on Monday with a panel that included Blackwater founder Erik Prince and conservative radio host and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino.
• At least five Secret Service officials have been assigned administrative duties pending the results of the agency's internal investigation. Four of the five were based in the agency's Pittsburgh office and one was part of Trump's security staff.

“You crazy people!”

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