Judge Cannon Will Get To Trump's Gag Order When She Gets To It. (Or Not.)
Guess those FBI agents should have known better than to execute a search warrant. They were asking for it!
“WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE,” Donald Trump screeched on Truth Social two weeks ago.
In reality, the “report” was his own motion to suppress, which misquoted the boilerplate language from the FBI operations order for the August 2022 search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. But that was of no interest to Trump’s minions, who previously doxxed two of the agents who participated in that search. As prompted, they obediently spent an entire news cycle howling about the supposed FBI plot to take out Trump.
Raising The Bar in Bar Prep
On Friday, May 24, the special counsel moved to modify the conditions of Trump’s release to prevent him from aiming his supporters’ vitriol at civil servants just doing their jobs. Particularly since those civil servants would likely be called as witnesses in the documents case currently stalled out in Judge Aileen Cannon’s Florida courtroom.
This move was clearly a strategic error, since the judge has shown reflexive hostility to the government’s arguments, excoriating the prosecutors for their failure to dot every “i”, and for failing to adequately confer with opposing counsel.
Sensing an advantage, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche threw a raging tantrum, last weekend, demanding sanctions on the government for refusing to sit down and listen to him scream about the unconstitutional attack on his client’s First Amendment right to attack the potential witnesses in this case.
And it worked. While Judge Cannon refused to sanction the special counsel, she did ream him a new one and ordered him to give Trump’s lawyers space to editorialize in all his filings going forward:
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Moreover, all certificates of conference going forward shall (1) appear in a separate section at the end of the motion, not embedded in editorialized footnotes; (2) specify, in objective terms, the exact timing, method, and substance of the conferral conducted; and (3) include, if requested by opposing counsel, no more than 200 words verbatim from the opposing side on the subject of conferral, again in objective terms. Failure to comply with these requirements may result in sanctions.
On Friday, the government renewed its motion, requesting that the court “modify defendant Donald J. Trump’s conditions of release, to make clear that he may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”
The special counsel repeatedly quoted Judge Cannon’s own words about her “independent obligation to protect the integrity of this judicial proceeding.” Those remarks were made in an August order issued sua sponte in response to “news reports of allegations of potential misconduct related to the investigation of this case and related reports of a review by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.” Apparently unsure of Chief Judge James Boasberg’s ability to supervise his own docket in DC, Judge Cannon demanded that the parties brief her on allegations by Walt Nauta’s lawyer Stan Woodward, who claims that the DOJ wrongfully pressured him get his client to flip. The court showed no such spontaneous solicitude when it came to protecting Nauta’s right to unconflicted counsel, taking three months to schedule a pro forma conflicts hearing after being informed that Woodward formerly represented the chief witness against his own client.
In Friday’s motion, the special counsel quoted extensively from the DC Circuit’s ratification of the gag order in the election interference case — an order Blanche refers to in his own filings as “unconstitutional.” Smith reminded the court that a defendant’s extrajudicial statements may be restricted when they pose a “substantial likelihood of material prejudice” to the proceedings. Gentile v. State Bar of Nev., 501 U.S. 1030, 1075 (1991)
The prosecutors also included verbatim the pissy conferral statement demanded by the court:
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As an initial matter, we do not believe that the Court or the defense should have to address the significant and complex constitutional issues presented by this motion until Pretrial Services has provided its views about whether such a condition is necessary to meet the purposes of the Bail Reform Act and how such a condition would be enforced. President Trump respectfully requests that the Court direct Pretrial Services to provide that input to the parties as soon as is practicable. On the merits, President Trump’s position is that the requested modification is a blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of President Trump and the American People, which would in effect allow President Trump’s political opponent to regulate his campaign communications to voters across the country. We seek the customary two weeks to respond to the motion, and we respectfully request that the defense opposition deadline run from the time at which the parties and the Court receive the requested information from Pretrial Services.
Judge Cannon’s distaste for editorializing has not thus far extended to the defense’s regular claims that President Biden is controlling the special counsel and using the prosecution as a tool to silence his political opponent. In fact, she gave the defendant almost everything he asked for, ordering Trump to respond by June 14, and giving the government until the 21st to reply. Then she can toss it on the pile of undecided motions and order oral arguments in September, if ever.
Luckily, Trump and his goons have wandered off to try to cut all federal funding for the state of New York in light of last week’s jury verdict. MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!
US v. Trump [SDFL Docket via Court Listener]
