Donald Trump takes the loss
We should soon be getting a ruling from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on the appointment of a special master in the classified documents fiasco. Trump once again experienced bad luck in this case, as two of the same justices who ruled against him before are hearing the case. Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher are both Trump appointees, and both overruled Judge Aileen Cannon on several of her rulings. The third justice hearing the case is a Bush (43) appointee named William Pryor Jr. Grant and Brasher ruled earlier that Cannon “abused her discretion” in granting the special master, so it seems that we may already know the outcome of this case.
According to AlterNet, the three-judge panel raked Trump’s lawyers over the proverbial coals during Tuesday’s hearing. The hearing was described as “tense” by Anna Bower of Lawfare Blog, who was in attendance. These justices are not idiots. They revealed that with their earlier ruling. The idea that these classified documents are “personal items” belonging to Trump is ridiculous, as is his claim that he waved a magic wand and declassified all of them.
AlterNet reported that mere minutes into the hearing, it was clear that Judge Pryor wasn’t buying what Trump’s attorneys were selling. Unlike Cannon, Judge Pryor wanted case law supporting Trump’s arguments. Specifically, according to Andrew Feinberg, who was reporting on the hearing, Judge Pryor as Trump’s attorney to “cite any case law in which a court has used equitable jurisdiction in a pre-indictment scenario.” Jim Trusty, Trump’s attorney, called the taking of documents that didn’t belong to Trump “a raid,” but Judge Grant admonished him, asking him if “raid” is the correct term. Trusty wants to call the document retrieval “unlawful,” but it was anything but that. Trump taking the documents was unlawful, yet his attorneys want to characterize the government retrieving them and returning them to where they belong as unlawful. These judges are not going to fall for Trusty’s nonsense. One of them called Trust’s argument a “secret” because it makes no sense. They further let Trump’s team know that they were on to them, pointing out that they seemed to be making “different arguments in different venues.”
Trump needs to give it up. These judges didn’t buy Cannon’s ridiculous ruling, and they are not buying Team Trump’s ridiculous arguments. Trump’s team has no basis in law for their arguments. They didn’t from the beginning. They lucked up and got Aileen Cannon, who went along with whatever they wanted, the law be damned. The three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals want a legal argument, and they are not going to get one from these clowns. As a result, they will likely rule against Trump’s team and, once again, overrule Aileen Cannon.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years