Showing posts with label Judge Cannon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judge Cannon. Show all posts

October 18, 2022

Investigation: The mystery of how Trump got Judge Cannon, coincidence or not?

Trump managed to get a Trump loving judge to kiss his royal ass, but was it blind luck?

By Hal Brown

I changed the photo of Trump originally depicted in an image someone else made of him on a mocked-up Time cover (here and below) to make him look decidedly unpresidential. I put him in prison and added Lady Justice on the left and an X'ed out altered image I made of Judge Cannon on the right.

Another of my images: Judge Cannon's reputation among what appears to be the vast majority of legal scholars seems to be in ruins. Does she care? My impression is that she couldn't care less even though she is in dire need of the legal version of a visit to the emergency room.


You need a Daily Beast subscription to read this article on their website where you can see the illustration which shows a rendering of a well-worn paperback mystery titled "The Cannon Clue."


You can read the Daily Beast article without a subscription here on YaHoo.

 RAWSTORY provides a good summary:

The Daily Beast story describes how Trump lawyers may have shopped for a judge they presumed would be not merely friendly but lovingly to kiss the ample Trump royal ass. The crucial would here is "may" since so far there's no proof they did this. Was the fix in? Or did they decide to increase the odds that they'd have Judge Cannon assigned the documents case. We just don't know the answer. This has not stopped speculation.

If you couldn't buy an item you needed in a nearby store in this era of online shopping you might get it from Amazon. But they did have the equivalent of an online store to file their case. They claimed the online mechanism was offline but it turns out it wasn't. This was a lie. So they they hit the streets and traveled some distance from the court where the case normally would have filed to Judge Cannon's courthouse. However, there are nine judges there so there would be no guarantee she'd get the case.

This is the gist of what the article reports:

When Donald Trump’s legal team filed their court paperwork protesting the Mar-a-Lago raid, a lawyer took the rare step of actually filing the paperwork in person. At a courthouse 44 miles from Mar-a-Lago. And they got a judge to oversee the case that was outside both West Palm Beach—where the raid took place—and the district where they filed," the Daily Beast reporter wrote. "Those incredible coincidences have led lawyers and legal experts to suggest that something may not be above board with how Trump’s team filed their lawsuit."
It turns out that filing such legal briefs are almost never done at a courthouse in person anymore. In almost all jurisdictions they are done electronically. 

The RAWSTORY article concludes:

Lawyers in the area, who didn't want to give their names, also found the method of filing the lawsuit curious.

According to one, "I don’t know anybody who files in person. I didn’t even know you could do that anymore. It looks like this person was trying to select a particular judge,” while another suggested, "People don’t do this anymore. It’s extremely odd. I guess you could do this if you wanted to get a particular judge—or avoid getting a particular judge."

So far there's no irrefutable proof that the fix was in. It may be that the cards were stacked to favor Cannon's being assigned the case. It may be a coincidence. 

This is from The Daily Beast:

  • “I think somebody pulled a fast one in the clerk’s office to rotate it to a friendly judge. It doesn’t sound like it was done by the blind filing system,” mused another.
  • ...which consists of nine judges. Cannon is in a neighboring division, so she can occasionally get West Palm Beach cases.
  • Theoretically, that would give Trump a 1-in-9 chance of getting Cannon on the case.
  • However, The Daily Beast analyzed new case assignments in West Palm Beach in the week preceding Trump’s lawsuit and found that Cannon actually got a much higher share, nine of the 29 new complaints—roughly a third of all cases.
  • But the system still appears random.
  • On Monday, Aug. 22, in West Palm Beach, Cannon got the first case. Trump’s lawsuit was the second of the day in that division, and she got that too.
  • A head clerk of federal courts in another state told The Daily Beast that lawyers sometimes time filings as if they’re players at a casino. Sometimes it works.
  • “If you play cards and count the cards, I suppose they could say, ‘I’ll hold this here until I see if other judges got assignments.’ But it would be very risky because it’s random,” she said.

 It all may boil down to what you believe:

Perhaps it was just the luck of the draw:


 

I made my illustration after reading the RAWSTORY article and posted it as a comment there among similar illustrations, below, which other readers posted. I altered this Time Magazine image to make my own:

I changed the photo of Trump to make him look decidedly unpresidential. I put him in prison and added Lady Justice on the left and an X'ed out altered image of Judge Cannon on the right.

Other commenters posted these images:








October 1, 2022

Autumn Cleanup: Trash can for Judge Cannon, Prison Putting For Trump

Autumn Cleanup: Trash can for Judge Cannon, Prison Putting For Trump

by Hal Brown 

I read a story about the chance that Judge Aileen Cannon could be removed from the Trump documents case titled

The door to remove Judge Aileen Cannon from the Trump case is now 'wide open': former prosecutor

In a column for Slate, former federal prosecutor Robert Katzberg made the case that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's continued interference in the work being done by special master Raymond Dearie in the matter of government documents stolen by Donald Trump could lead to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepping in and taking the case from her.

I  came up with this image:


The Florida federal district court judge has seemingly been quite camera shy since a Google image search of her comes up with only one other recent photo and a couple of them from her wedding. For those wanting to use her in a photo manipulated image of her in a trash can there's no photos of her standing.




The next stories I looked at had to do with Trump and his racist, violence inciting (and misspelled) Truth Social screed. 

Clicking above enlarges image, does not go to Truth Social, he spells advice :"advise"

It led to lot of blowback on Twitter (where he can no longer post since he was suspended). See: 

'Thinly-veiled incitement to violence and overt racism': Trump's Truth Social post sparks outrage

There's nothing here that could result in Trump going to prison, but needless to say, there are lots of crimes he committed which could end him up residing not his tasteless Florida house and hotel but instead in the big house, aka the greybar hotel, or choose your own slang term for prison.


After attorney Christopher Kise accepted $3 million to represent Donald Trump in the FBI’s investigation of government documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, the veteran litigator argued that Trump should adopt a new strategy.

Turn down the temperature with the Department of Justice, Kise — a former Florida solicitor general — counseled his famously combative client, people familiar with the deliberations said....

Instead, just a few weeks after Kise was brought aboard, he finds himself in a battle, trying to persuade Trump to go along with his legal strategy and fighting with some other advisers who have counseled a more aggressive posture. The dispute has raged for at least a week, Trump advisers say, with the former president listening as various lawyers make their best arguments. 


My assessment of those attorneys who are telling Trump to be aggressive are just telling him what he wants to hear in order to placate him and keep their jobs.

From the Post:

Trump seems, at least for now, to be heeding advice from those who have indulged his desire to fight.

The approach could leave the former president on a collision course with the Justice Department, as he relies on a legal trust that includes three attorneys facing their own potential legal risks.

Here's what Barbara McQuade said on the Katie Phang show:

"I say, Katie, to those lawyers who joined in good faith and think they're going to change Donald Trump: bless you and good luck, here we go again," she replied. "Donald Trump has one mode and it is all offense all the time."

"Anyone who thinks he is going to change, you know, it's like the woman who marries the man and says 'I'm going to change him.' No. People are who they are," she explained. "At this point in life, shame on him for not knowing who Donald Trump is."




Even though Trump's continued belligerence won't directly result in him going to prison there's no way a competent and ethical lawyer wouldn't strongly dissuade him from engaging in this behavior. He is slowly but surely turning more and more of public sentiment against him. This recklessness will ultimately be self-defeating. Attorney General Garland no doubt is aware of this and while this won't directly effect his decision whether to indict him he has to know Trump is daring him, and state prosecutors, to just try to pry the emperor out of his Mar-a-Lago castle....

which reminds me of the following:

Another example of generalized slang for prison that came from a specific prison is the term "the castle." This term used to refer to Sing Sing prison. Located in Ossining, New York, Sing Sing prison is one of America's oldest prisons and used to be called "the castle on the Hudson River." The word "castle" is now used to refer to any jail as well.
Reference

Back to my penchant for making illustrations.

The are lots of photoshop-type images of Trump behind bars. It is easy enough to look up prison bars and put them over a picture of Trump.




I began to think of another way to depict what I' d like to happen to him. If and hopefully when Trump goes to prison of course he will need to be protected from harm or harassment from other prisoners and while not being held in solitary confinement he'd need to be segregated from the general population. He will have a right to outside exercise and thus will need to be allowed to spend time in a special fenced in area.

I found a photo of such an area:
I found two photos of Trump putting. One I'd already used here:
This would have been a good one to use except Trump wouldn't be wearing a suit in prison. It is one of the rare photos of Trump not wearing a MAGA hat. 

The only other photo of Trump putting has him wearing a hat, which I suppose might be allowed in prison.


Unfortunately he's wearing his usual golf garb. I doubt he'd be able to dress in his own clothes so  you'll have to imagine him wearing prison casual (below) in my final illustration.

So here is my picture of lucky Trump, who is not only allowed to use a little putter and golf ball and even wear his own clothes, but has a small patch of green grass to practice putting on. Maybe he has one of those rubber office putting practice golf holes to move around and pretend he's really on the putting green at one of his old golf courses. (Click images to enlarge)


I couldn't resist making this one:

Related

During an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday afternoon, civil rights attorney Charles Coleman suggested that Donald Trump's demand that his attorneys aggressively push back at the Department of Justice investigation into stolen documents at Mar-a-Lago could do substantial damage to their careers. From RawStory

Above: Clever title, if you're too young to remember or not up on old musical hits:



 



In the news today: How far will the Supreme Court go to promote trans ignorance and anti-trans bigotry? By Hal M. Brown, MSW

Above:  Protesters of Kentucky Senate Bill SB150, known as the Transgender Health Bill, cheer on speakers during a rally on the lawn of the ...