Line of the Day
Cable news v. court edition.
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, September 29, 2022
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8 comments
“While it is not a crime to lie to Fox News viewers or on social media, there are consequences to lying to a court.”-From the NYT: ‘Giant Backfire’: Trump’s Demand for Special Master Is Looking Like a Mistake
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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I have been meaning to do an update on the most recent updates on this case once I get down with this conference paper and presentation I have been working on.
This definitely adopters to be a case of the dog catching the car. And I don’t see this going well for team Trump.
If I recall correctly, FG’s attorneys for the Mueller investigation told Mueller that they would prefer allowing FG to provide a written statement answering all questions the investigators wanted to ask. As I also recall, they were unusually candid in explaining why they would not allow him to undergo live questioning. Need I go on?
Marcy Wheeler is reporting that Judge Cannon has taken pretty decisive action to slow Judge Dearie’s roll and push everything back to after the election.
@Jay L Gischer: I mean, she “Excused Trump from having to lodge challenges to the inventory” which is a pretty big break.
I predict that the 11th Circuit will reverse a bunch of this stuff, or outright take the case away from her soon.
If Cannon wants to act as Benito’s lawyer, she should take a leave of absence from the bench.
@Jay L Gischer: I’m not sure they can just take it away from her, absent some filing by one of the parties, and I’m not sure that instructions to a Special Master are appealable. I’m not a law talking guy, but that’s my understanding, at least.
It’s also not entirely clear that DOJ cares about this type of fuckery *that* much, given that they have access to the classified docs again. That is, this slows down a part of the case that may be of secondary importance.
The quickest way to get Cannon off the case would be for the DC Circuit to get control of it, which is where cases involving classified documents are supposed to go. And the quickest way to *that* court would be for DOJ to actually file charges related to the classified documents which, per above, they have access to for criminal investigative purposes. So the ultimate result of Cannon fucking around to find out may be charges getting filed sooner than later.
@Jon: Correcting/supplementing what I said above …
Ah it seems that the original appeal to the 11th is still pending, it was just the stay of that one portion that already came through. From Marcy’s place:
@Jon: I like your analysis. It definitely appears that the FBI is not especially eager to file charges, possibly because it would show their hand too much? Or maybe it’s just general probity? Or maybe they are trying to take the whole “not before an election” thingy seriously?