Trump and the other codefendants in Fani Willis' Gonna Catch Me Some D prosecution have appealed the cowardly political ruling that Fani Willis should not be forced to recuse herself from the prosecution, even though he admitted that the testimony offered by Fani and Sweetdick had the "scent of mendacity," or words to that effect. (Might have been a different smell, TBH.)
On Wednesday, the Georgia Court of Appeals issued an order staying any further proceedings in the matter, pending the outcome of the appeal. The order applies to the case against Trump as well as to his co-defendants: Michael Roman, David Shafer, Robert Cheeley, Mark Meadows, Cathleen Latham, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, and Harrison Floyd.
Ultimately, that means the Georgia case will not be proceeding ahead of the November election.
The new order filed on Wednesday from the Georgia Court of Appeals is the latest indication that a trial in the state-level Georgia election subversion case will not occur before the 2024 presidential election.The appeals court is expected to rule on the disqualification issue by March 2025, though it could issue a ruling sooner. Several sources close to the case have told CNN that the timeline remains very uncertain.
Meanwhile, Judge Aileen Cannon is hearing arguments about whether Jack Smith's appointment as special counsel is legal or not. It's not. The law states that a special counsel must be appointed from outside the DOJ, and Jack Smith was working there when he was appointed.
This article by Crybully Nonsense Network CNN is full of salt.
Notice that at no point do they alert readers as to why Jack Smith's appointment is being challenged -- if people read that, they'd say, "Oh well, he's clearly been illegally appointed, why is this even a question?"
So instead they hide that and just tell you about All the Other (Leftwing) Judges who have refused to hear arguments on this highly salient point.
Judge Aileen Cannon rips up court schedule in Mar-a-Lago case in ways that benefit Trump
Nothing but straight factual reporting from the Crybully Nonsense Network.
Judge Aileen Cannon is again ripping up the court schedule in former President Donald Trump's classified documents case -- pushing some of the legal questions that have been before her for months even further down the road.
Cannon is planning on holding a sprawling hearing on Trump's request to declare Jack Smith's appointment as special counsel invalid, signaling she could be more willing than any other trial judge to veto the special prosecutor's authority.
The planned hearing also adds a new, unusual twist in the federal criminal case against the former president: Cannon on Tuesday said that a variety of political partisans and constitutional scholars not otherwise involved with the case can join in the oral arguments later this month.
What the Crybully Nonsense Network is crying about there is that she is allowing amicus briefs, or "friend of the court" briefs. These are entirely unexceptional and a standard, routine filing in trials where many people beyond the instant defendants have an interest or "stakeholder" position in the outcome.
Here's an article about a left-aligned lawfirm submitting amicus curiae briefs in Soros Prosecutor Alvin Bragg's lawsuit against Jim Jordan and the judiciary committee.
Google's definition of amicus curiae:
With the permission of the Court, groups that do not have a direct stake in the outcome of the case, but are nevertheless interested in it, may file what is known as an amicus curiae (Latin for "friend of the court") brief providing their own arguments and recommendations for how the case should be decided.
But CNN is pushing the disinformation that this is some unprecedented trick by Cannon, so they're not going to tell you that this is all extremely routine and Cannon's ruling is thoroughly unexceptional.
It's an extraordinary elevation of arguments in a criminal case -- filed a year ago this week -- that likely won't see trial until next year, if at all.
Wednesday, Cannon went further, adding a hearing on a gag order request from prosecutors to limit Trump's rhetoric about law enforcement and allotting more time to hear arguments on the special counsel issue.
Jack Smith demanded a Judge Mechan style gag order to stop Trump from talking about the unprecedented FBI raid on the home of a president. Because it might lead to people distrusting or feeling hostile towards our Brave and Noble Straight-Shooters in the FBI.
As I've said before, Merchan's order is arguably authorized. (Arguably -- I disagree.) He claimed he imposed a gag order to preserve the proper functioning of the court. Judges have the power to do that.
But what is Jack Smith's pretext from imposing a gag order to prevent the broad public from not feeling the feels for the FBI any longer? What does that have to do with the administration of justice in this trial?
Nothing. He just doesn't want Trump to talk negatively about the people who crookedly "gathered evidence" by posing the documents in classified folders they brought to the scene themselves.
Cannon will hear arguments on those issues the week of June 21, as well as on the effort by Trump to throw out evidence in his case that was gathered by the FBI in its 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago or provided by his former attorney Evan Corcoran to a grand jury.
At the same time, she delayed other hearings without setting a new date.
The calendar shuffling is the latest example of Cannon's approach so far to the national security case: scheduling hours in court for arguments that other courts have mostly denied, and pushing off resolution of various legal matters for months.
Oh, other leftwing judges have denied similar motions -- "mostly."
So obviously this is just a big partisan trick by Cannon.
Similar challenges from Trump and other high-level targets of special counsel probes have flopped from coast to coast in recent years: Hunter Biden's attorney didn't get anywhere with judges in Los Angeles and Delaware; Paul Manafort's arguments fell flat when the former Trump campaign chairman challenged special counsel Robert Mueller's authority; and Andrew Miller, a former associate of Roger Stone, also lost his challenge to Mueller's authority.
In what way are these completely-different challenges "similar"? The only point of similarity are that most are about prosecutions of people associated with Trump.
And Hunter Biden? The DOJ tried to rig a plea hearing by snowing the judge. The extraordinary Free Pass for all crimes committed and even those not yet discovered was hidden in a side-document only referenced in the actual plea bargain. They counted on the judge not reading that side-document and just blessing the fake plea bargain with a rubber stamp.
But she did read it, and was about to deny the plea bargain as corrupt (the state, the "People" in this matter, got absolutely nothing in exchange for giving an illegal-gun-owning crackhead carte blanche legal immunity for EVERYTHING he's ever done).
Later his corrupt fixer attempted to have the case thrown out on the dazzlingly-insane theory that Hunter Biden's prosecution was a political witch-hunt by his own father.
HOW THE HELL IS THAT "SIMILAR" TO TRUMP'S MOTION!?!
More Crybully Nonsense Network complaining that this judge isn't automatically siding with the political prosecutors like "most" other judges have done.
Even with other federal trial-level judges allowing special counsels' criminal prosecutions, Cannon could rule differently.
Ruling differently? We can't have that. Other judges have imposed precedent on her, despite them ruling on entirely different motions and despite the fact that those judges are on an equal plane to her, that is, they are not "above her" in the judicial appeals ecosystem and their rulings, even if they were on similar issues, simply do not bind her.
Cannon's signal of willingness to entertain challenges to the special counsel comes in the same week Republicans are bearing down on Attorney General Merrick Garland for his use of special counsels.
Cannon has already taken a drastically different tack from other trial-level federal judges who have handled criminal cases charged by recent special counsel's offices -- of which there have been five since Trump became president.
While others have moved swiftly to trial -- including special counsel David Weiss trying his case against Hunter Biden in Delaware this week, eight months after indictment -- Cannon has moved slowly on pre-trial issues from Trump and his two co-defendants.
Other partisan judges rushed to get these trials finished before the election -- why is Cannon moving so slowly?
They can't admit this is all being done to influence the election, so they're very vague about why this must happen in the next couple of months instead of in December.
...
And it is highly unusual for a federal trial judge to allow a third-party group unaffiliated with a criminal case to argue in court as part of a defendant's legal challenges to the case itself. That work is essentially reserved for defendants' teams to bring and argue in courts across the country, opposite Justice Department prosecutors. Allowing third parties to argue in court is even rare in appeals situations.
It's not rare. And this case is extraordinary -- which is why any responsible judge would want to be briefed on all issues before ruling.
Unlike Mechan, the Democrat Party's Rubber Stamp adding a veneer of legality to their Soviet tactics.
But Cannon has been convinced by three separate groups of lawyers that they should be able to argue before her. Two of those groups support Trump's position to dismiss the case against him and say the special counsel, for various constitutional reasons, doesn't have authority to prosecute. A third group says the Department of Justice's use of a special counsel should be upheld.
"For various constitutional reasons." And also, the law that says a special counsel cannot be an existing employee of the Justice Department.
Also note that she's hearing arguments from a Jack Smith ally. The article calls the other two outside groups joining the case "Republicans," but tells us nothing about the politics of the group arguing in Jack Smith's favor.
Two former Republican-appointed US attorneys general, Edwin Meese and Michael Mukasey, are part of the groups of so-called "friends of the court" that side with Trump and whom Cannon will hear from. The three groups will be allowed to argue, in addition to Justice Department and defendants' lawyers, for 30 minutes each, according to the court record.
They're saying "friends of the court" as if these Republicans are friends of Aileen Cannon." Amicus curiae does mean "friend of the court," but it's a term of art meaning "anyone with important arguments or facts about a ruling that a judge agrees to hear so that she will have the most and best information for making her ruling. They're making this sound like some arcane, unknown trick rule, when in fact it's routine in all cases with a big political or policy import.
Still nothing about that group arguing on behalf of Jack Smith. I guess they're not politically aligned at all -- they're just "experts," whose only political affiliation is to The Truth.
Trump's legal team is angling to convince the judge to force the government to turn over more records from far-flung offices of the executive branch.
The special counsel's office argued to Cannon in person months ago that making federal government officials witnesses at this stage of the case -- as Trump wants -- would be an unprecedented exploitation of the court.
Cannon still agreed to the hearing Trump wanted. But that hearing is no longer on the schedule.
The special counsel made an argument but Cannon is "still" granting Trump a hearing on the issue. This judge didn't just take a leftwing hatchet-man's word on the law as gospel! This is unprecedented!!!