Posted on 09/06/2022 8:52:56 PM PDT by Signalman
A ray of light has burst forth from the chambers of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon making a Trump indictment very unlikely. At last, we find a jurist with a real world understanding of the stakes involved and the meaning for the country of a possible criminal proceeding against the former president.
Until Judge Cannon’s ruling granting Trump’s lawyers’ request for the appointment of a special master to review the documents seized in the Mar-a-Lago raid, I felt that the case was in the grip of bureaucrats who had no understanding, or even any interest, in bringing any sense of proportionality to the controversy over the archives.
Here we faced the possibility of a former president and a future candidate for president facing prosecution for what amounts to an overdue library book. The Archives of the United States is, in essence, a library with some of the nation’s most important documents. But, like most libraries, it is also cluttered with trivia.
We had been faced, before Judge Cannon spoke, with the possibility that some bureaucrat/librarian would conspire with the Democratic partisans at the Justice Department to indict Donald Trump for failing to return documents to the library. Nobody seems to have equated the potential punishment — catastrophic to our political system — with the largely record-keeping crime.
But then Judge Cannon proved that at least one judge had a proper sense of proportionality. She wrote, of the possibility of a Trump indictment, quoting a previous court ruling that: “A wrongful indictment is no laughing matter; it often works a grievous, irreparable injury to the person indicted. The stigma cannot be easily erased. In the public mind, the blot on a man’s escutcheon, resulting from such a public accusation of wrongdoing, is seldom wiped out by a subsequent judgment of not guilty. Frequently, the public remembers the accusation, and still suspects guilt, even after an acquittal.”
And, because the stigma might fall on a former president, the judge wrote, “It is in a league of its own. A future indictment, based to any degree on property that ought to be returned, would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude.”
At last, we find a judge who grasps that all violations of the law are not equal and that it would be disproportionate and smack of judicial authoritarianism to indict a former president for the issues at stake in the Archive controversy,
If there were any implication or accusation that President Trump had jeopardized the national security by mishandling the documents, it would be a different story. But if his offense is that he consigned the documents to gathering dust in the Mar-a-Lago basement, as opposed to the basement of the National Archives, is this worth a prosecution? An indictment? The repetitional damage to a former president and, perhaps a future presidential candidate, makes the only possible answer a resounding “NO!”
Now that a judge has seen the issue in a perspective unavailable to the tunnel vision of the bureaucrats at the Archives and the politicians at the Department of Justice it appears likely that this cup will pass from our lips.
Indict Bagpiper Barr for not getting control of the Domestic Terrorists at the DOJ.
Given Morris is saying this, I’ll put money on there being an indictment, no matter how bogus it might be.
I doubt that will stop them from indicting him. We can put absolutely nothing past these Evil bastards.
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Biden is giving the orders.
We’ve seen repeatedly where he pushes orders - things he knows are unconstitutional, rolling the dice that Roberts can twist someone’s arm.
That translates to him here ordering a case brought that is not strong.
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I doubt that will stop them from indicting him. We can put absolutely nothing past these Evil bastards.
Democrats have handed Trump another win.
Judge Aileen M. Cannon
It is not even failure to return documents. They were after the crossfire hurricane docs. Trump has copies. They still have the originals which they were supposed to make available to the public but are slow walking it.
marc elias let the cat out of the bag
the plan is to make Trump defend himself during his presidential campaign
nothing political there just enforcing the law
The same Dick Morris who predicted a landslide win for Romney ten years ago? At least it’s his own foot that’s getting stuck in his mouth this time.
Still believe there will be an indictment, but now probably after the midterms.
True. We can’t be naive.
That’s right. We must face the truth.
Has anybody asked Dick Morris what happened to the Romney landslide he was so sure of?
I find it interesting that the media made sure to mention that this judge was a “Trump appointed judge”
Dick Morris should not be using headlines like this, he needs to stay in his Lane in his expertise. He is not an expert on the lawn or judicial manners.
This is what makes everybody think Dick Morris is a loon, a chitter chatter, and somebody who is just not somebody that you want to refer to or quote
Toe sucking makes for superior prognostication?
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