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United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon was on the receiving end of advice from a noted legal scholar that she needs to handle the 37-count indictment of Donald Trump with care next week in light of her being "slapped down" the last time she handled a high profile case involving the former president.
Appearing with MSNBC host Ali Velshi, Harvard Law's Laurence Tribe called the allegations contained in special counsel Jack Smith's legal brief "jaw-dropping" and claimed Cannon -- who will likely oversee the initial hearing -- needs to 'call it straight" when making rulings.
Questioning how the Trump-appointed judge was assigned the case, Tribe told the host, "It's a little puzzling how she was chosen. The earlier case was not really a criminal case it was a civil suit brought by Donald Trump for the appointment of a special master, and the very conservative 11th circuit unanimously concluded she has no jurisdiction at all -- she was off the reservation -- and the former president didn't even appeal that."
"Her earlier experience, if anything, doesn't count in favor of her handling this," he warned. "Maybe she is only handling the arraignment on Tuesday afternoon, but if she is appointed, then, I do worry that the degree to which she leaned over backwards in the direction of ruling for Trump, in ways even a conservative court slapped her down for and criticized her for, suggests that her loyalty may be somewhat more towards the guy who made her a federal judge, the one who appointed her, than to the Constitution."
"I hope that if she does what I recommended all your readers do and read this very concise and easy-to-read indictment - and she will, she will surely read , that even she will have a jaw-dropping experience, thinking, is that the guy who appointed me? Is this the guy on whose behalf I went out on a limb?" he added.
"Hopefully that will be her reaction, and she will go back to a normal judicial role and any normal judge with an indictment the strong, with evidence that comes straight from the defendant's mouth or from the mouths of his lawyers after a definitive adjudication of the attorney/client provision, any judge would really decide that it's important one way or the other that will be a verdict in this case before the next election so, the people of the United States know whether it is someone who is guilty of espionage, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and lying to the government with dangerous secrets of our national security -- whether that's the kind of person they want as president."
Adding that he hopes she won't make "dubious rulings," Tribe continued that he hoped she will "call it straight and, if she does, it's very hard to see what defense Donald Trump can present."
"You read it and your jaw drops and you get scared for the country," he said of special counsel Jack Smith's filing, "So, I'm hoping that despite the fact that Aileen Cannon would not have been my first choice as judge, it won't matter who the judge is, justice will be done."
Watch below or at the link:
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In a column for the conservative National Review, longtime political observer Andrew McCarthy made the case that Donald Trump can no longer call the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith a "witch hunt" since key evidence contained in the 37-count indictment was provided courtesy of his own lawyers.
As McCarthy points out, the charges against the former president should give his defenders pause and that analogies to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's national security issues are grossly misplaced.
More to the point, McCarthy suggested that the "witch hunt" Trump has been ranting about is non-operative since the damning information about his treatment of sensitive government documents came from his own lawyers who were employed to defend him.
He wrote, "Now, since we’re hearing a lot, and we’re going to hear a lot more, about selective prosecution, about the sense that the 'boxes hoax' is the 'biggest witch hunt of all time,' understand this: The evidence of this soliloquy — wherein it was Trump-splained that a 'great job' by a lawyer entails making incriminating evidence disappear and taking the fall for it so the client escapes jeopardy — does not come from Donald Trump’s enemies."
RELATED: 'Stuck with whatever he can get': Trump has a lawyer 'problem' as he faces off with Jack Smith
Noting that Trump attorney Evan Corcoran stuck by the former president after he learned he "had been had" with regard to the hiding of the documents the FBI was forced to recover, McCarthy wrote, "Corcoran was not trying to hurt Trump, even though Trump had thought nothing of putting the lawyer’s livelihood at risk. Corcoran provided the lurid testimony reflected in the indictment — including Trump’s suggestions that he falsely tell the FBI and grand jury that he did not have documents marked classified, and that he 'pluck' out of a package of documents responsive to the subpoena 'anything really bad in there' — because the law required him to, not because he wanted to."
"As for Trump, say what you want about Democrats being out to destroy him. I know all about that — wrote a book about it, in fact. But if Trump ends up being destroyed in this case, it will be based on the accounts of people who had his best interests at heart," he wrote before adding, "If you tell me I need to look the other way on that because Hillary Clinton got a pass, I respectfully suggest that you’ve lost your way."
You can read more here.
Now that the contents of special counsel Jack Smith's 37-count indictment of Donald Trump have been unsealed, some close advisers to the former president are expressing dismay and shock at the details with one saying it all could have been avoided if the former president had only complied with government requests.
According to a report from the Washington Post, confidence in the Trump defense has waned after the evidence presented in the indictment became public knowledge.
The Post is reporting, "The indictment unsealed Friday rattled some of his advisers, who were not aware of the granular evidence obtained by the Justice Department, according to people familiar with the matter," before adding, "Two people said the evidence was more damning than they expected, and could have been avoided if Trump would have just listened to his lawyers and advisers."
RELATED: Michael Cohen points to new signs of Trump's 'state of panic'
Noting the departure of two key Trump lawyers within 24 hours of the indictment announcement, which has left the Trump legal team scrambling before the Tuesday Florida hearing, the Post reports the recovery process is being "driven by unforced errors and stubbornness."
According to one adviser to the former president, "The story of this will be we didn’t have to get to this place. None of this really had to happen. It was all so, so dumb.”
Republican pollster Whit Ayres admitted that the Smith case is profoundly more concerning than the indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, telling the Post: "If you were trying to design a lawsuit that was easy for Republicans to dismiss as a partisan witch hunt, you would produce exactly the lawsuit that Alvin Bragg brought. Jack Smith is not a jokester.”
You can read more here.
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