GOP judges 'dragged Judge Cannon through the mud' — and upheld the law she flouted: Watergate prosecutor
On Friday's edition of MSNBC's "The ReidOut," former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks analyzed the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit's decision ending the special master review of documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The decision was not just a blow to Trump, said Wine-Banks, but also to District Judge Aileen Cannon herself, a Trump appointee who went out on a limb to order the review against all precedent, only to be unanimously dismissed by a panel of three deeply conservative Republican-appointed judges, including two other Trump appointees.
"What did you make of that ruling?" asked anchor Joy Reid.
"Everything in the opinion — and it's a per curiam, which means all three judges agreed to everything in it, it's not signed by any one in particular. And that includes the Chief [Judge] of the Eleventh Circuit, Judge Pryor, who is from one of the most conservative backgrounds ever. All three are Republican appointees. And they all basically said the law is the law, and we are sticking with the law. They said none of the things that the judge did, Judge Cannon, have any relevance to the cases that we have ever seen before. And it would entitle every single person who has ever had a search to do the same thing, because we cannot carve out just for one person, a man named Donald Trump. He does not get anything special."
The decision, Wine-Banks concluded, was "really a victory for our system of justice, for the rule of law."
"It was a very well-written opinion," she said. "And it ... dragged Judge Cannon through the mud. It really slapped her down. At every opportunity they could, they just made it clear that she was completely off the mark."
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