U.S. Court of Appeals has had enough of Donald Trump’s crap
When Donald Trump belatedly appealed his case to the Supreme Court earlier this week, he gave away that he didn’t really expect the move to work, or even buy him any time. If he thought that were the case, he’d have gone running to Clarence Thomas two weeks ago, instead of letting the DOJ continue working on its indictment against him all this time. Instead Trump was making the move out of desperation, knowing it wasn’t of any real value, because he had nothing else left to try.
Sure enough, that started to become more clear for all to see yesterday, when the 11th District U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the DOJ in allowing an expedited appeal of what’s left of Judge Aileen Cannon’s nonsensical special master ruling. This is the same Court of Appeals that already took the classified documents away from Cannon’s jurisdiction at the DOJ’s request. Now it appears poised to quickly take the entire thing away from Cannon.
More to the point, the Court of Appeals doesn’t appear to have any interest in waiting to see how Trump’s Supreme Court appeal will play out, presumably because it doesn’t expect the Supreme Court to get involved. To that end, when Thomas gave the DOJ a week to respond to Trump’s appeal, Thomas declined to ask the DOJ to stop working on its Trump case in the meantime, suggesting that even Thomas is hesitant to get involved in this mess.
In any case, none of this seems to be working in Donald Trump’s favor. Thus far he hasn’t managed to substantially delay anything – and he’s already nearly out of appeals. Given that the DOJ’s ability to prosecute him does not hinge on the outcome of the midterms in any way, shape, or form, it doesn’t really matter if he’s indicted before or after the midterms. All that really matters is that he’s closer to indictment than ever – and the DOJ keeps winning the court battles it needs to win in order to take Trump down.
