Judge Aileen Cannon Just Got Her First Big Trump Trial Test
Donald Trump would like his trial in the classified documents case to be postponed indefinitely. Maybe he thinks that if he delays it long enough, the whole thing will just go away. Or maybe he thinks that if he delays it until after the 2024 presidential election, he will be back in the Oval Office and have the authority to end the case or pardon himself.
Either way, the case for postponement that developed in the motion his lawyers filed on Monday mixes some standard legal claims with a transparent—and transparently reckless—effort to cast his prosecution as a politically inspired vendetta.
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On the first page of their motion, Trump’s lawyers ignore the fact that Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the case against the former president, is not a political appointee of President Joe Biden. They mischaracterize the case as a prosecution “advanced by the administration of a sitting President against his chief political rival, himself a leading candidate for the Presidency of the United States.”
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Whatever Judge Aileen Cannon does with the request for a postponement, she should not let that inaccurate and destructive allegation go unchallenged. At a time when faith that the courts are above politics is waning, Trump’s effort in court to cast the prosecution in partisan terms presents a renewed test of what Cannon will let Trump get away with in the unfolding case over which she is presiding.
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If the judge silently acquiesces to his effort to describe his criminal case as a political trial it would add to the damage that the former president’s unfounded allegations have already done to the rule of law in this country. It seems unlikely, based on previous behavior, but Cannon could also lay down an early marker that the wishes of Trump and his legal team will not be allowed to run these proceedings.
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Of course, there is nothing new about Trump’s strategy in the classified documents case.
Right from the start, Trump has tried to cast the probe into his alleged mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice as entirely a politically motivated effort by the Biden administration to cripple a political opponent.
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Even as the FBI was conducting a search of his Mar-a-Lago residence on Aug. 8, 2022, the former president went on the attack. At the time, Trump said that his estate “is currently under siege, raided, and occupied.”
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He took to Truth Social to say, without evidence, that “Biden knew all about this, just like he knew all about Hunter’s deals.” (Biden has denied any foreknowledge of any of the moves in this case.) To make matters worse, Trump went specifically after the prosecutors involved: “It is all, in my opinion, a coordinated attack with Radical Left Democrat state & local D.A.’s & A.G.’s.”
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At a political rally in early September of 2022, Trump doubled down on his effort to cast his prosecution in partisan terms.
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There, he told his supporters that “the FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.”
He called the Mar-a-Lago search “one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history” and “a travesty of justice.” He alleged that the Biden administration was “trying to silence me, and more importantly they’re trying to silence you. But we will not be silenced, right?”
He referred to President Biden as “an enemy of the state.”
Simultaneously to this very obvious political strategy, Trump filed a complaint in Cannon’s courtroom claiming, again without evidence, that the search itself was political persecution. “Law enforcement is a shield that protects Americans. It cannot be used as a weapon for political purposes,” Trump’s attorneys argued in requesting that the investigation be brought to a halt. “Politics cannot be allowed to impact the administration of justice.”
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Cannon bought this absurd and baseless argument and temporarily halted the investigation based on the notion that the former president deserved special consideration, before her ruling was resoundingly rejected by an appellate panel of fellow Republican-appointed judges. Cannon now has an early opportunity to demonstrate whether or not she’s learned her lesson.
What Trump says out of the courtroom, it should be said, is another matter. After the indictment, Trump released a video connecting it to the Big Lie about the 2020 election and accusing the Biden administration of “going after a popular president, a president who got more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country, by far … they are weaponizing the Justice Department, weaponizing the FBI.”
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Political speech is one thing, but lawyers have a higher obligation when it comes to what they say in, and to, a court. They have a duty to be truthful.
That Trump’s lawyers say that the case against him is the “prosecution of a leading Presidential candidate by his political opponent” is false and blurs the distinction between the free-for-all of the political marketplace and their professional obligations.
They push the boundaries further when they assert that in the classified documents case, the “opposing candidates are effectively (if not literally) directly adverse to one another in this action.”
Cannon should go on the record and make clear her belief that whatever its substantive merits, the prosecution of Donald Trump cannot be reduced to a political dispute between him and the person who replaced him in the White House.
The Code of Conduct for United States Judges provides the guidance that she needs. It makes clear that judges have a special obligation to protect the rule of law and act “in a manner that promotes public confidence” in it.
We will soon see if Judge Cannon chooses to fulfill that duty.
Source: Slate
