• BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    District Judge Aileen Cannon said in a 93-page order that she has granted Trump’s bid to dismiss the indictment based on the unlawful funding and appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against the former president.

    So this should be easy for appeals court to overturn right?

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The “liberal media” is not “tripping over themselves to talk about this like it’s some complicated issue”.

      The Washington Post called bullshit:

      U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ruling is a remarkable win for Trump, whose lawyers have thrown longshot argument after longshot argument to dismiss the case. Other courts have rejected similar arguments to the one that he made in Florida about the legality of Smith’s appointment.

      Cannon’s decision comes as Trump is preparing to be formally nominated as the Republican presidential nominee in this year’s election, with the Republican National Convention beginning in Milwaukee on Monday.

      The legal theory that Smith was illegally appointed and funded has generally been considered far-fetched. Trump’s legal team didn’t adopt the argument in court until conservative legal groups pushed it.

      This is as far as they can go in saying that “this decision is unhinged” while still maintaining their aura of objectivity. They’re not going to do it explicitly in the main article, that will come in the opinion pieces that will be released in a few hours, surely

      • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Nowhere do they explicitly connect this to her political ideology. That’s exactly my point, they’re soft-selling it.

        The liberal media (no quotes needed, they’re corporate neoliberal) refuses to actually call a spade a spade.

        This is not a critical article, this is just them shrugging and being like “Oh, well, it seems like tenuous grounds for dismissal but thems the licks.”

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Without intent to offend, perhaps neutral reporting isn’t for you. They reported all the facts and leave you to come up with your own opinion, which is a mark of high-quality journalism.

          They are a news agency. They are not here to tell you what to think of the news. You want your news to tell you what to think. I want my news to tell me what happened and give me the information necessary to form my own opinion.

          If they said explicitly or implied that she did this because of her ideology, even if that is likely true, that would not be unbiased.

            • GreyBeard@lemmy.one
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              2 months ago

              On the one side, this man is accused of murdering 30 people. On the other side, he’s been called a lover of puppies. Let’s meet in the middle and say he’s a bad driver.

          • t_chalco@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            This is an important detail often missed when discussing journalism, objectivity, bias, and, unfortunately, integrity. It’s a necessary piece of fabric that has been fraying for years. As another lemmy post some month ago put it, with the loss of the Cronkite era folks lost faith in the fourth estate. The tragedy is that the stratification of news by party and by medium is that anything right of CNN, most of the fringe blogosphere, and nearly all of the AM stations is that they are presenting opinionated hot takes as journalistic facts. Moreover, this tends to galvanize an already consitent voter base. It seems like without an emotional appeal to resisting consrvative ideologues the rhetoric and relative baseline just keep slipping.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        “Maintaining an aura of objectivity” is itself blatant pro-fascist bias!

  • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Ironically this would also invalidate any of the cases against Hunter Biden if the supreme court agrees with her.

      • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        Cannon’s ruling is going to be appealed. If it gets appealed all the way to the supreme court, again (and Clarence Thomas has specifically asked for this in one of his prior rulings), and the supreme court holds with them, then any charges brought by a special counsel in any case are gone. Her ruling invalidates special counsels in general. The office that is pressing charges against Hunter Biden will no longer exist.

        The scary part about this is it means that if Trump were to win he would have every excuse and cover from the judiciary to hand pick his own justice department attorney hires to go after people with no semblance of independence. After all, special counsels aren’t even allowed to be used anymore. So you’re of course right, it does fit into a larger fascist plant, and I certainly don’t mean to imply that it doesn’t or this isn’t all for Trump’s benefit.

        I just wanted to point out that the current move would also be able to get Hunter Biden off the hook on the off chance that it gets anyone blindly supporting Trump immunity to stop and think for a second that maybe this isn’t actually a good thing (since a lot of them seem to have some pretty extreme beliefs about Hunter Biden going to jail).

          • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Cannon’s ruling is going to be appealed. If it gets appealed all the way to the supreme court, again (and Clarence Thomas has specifically asked for this in one of his prior rulings), and the supreme court holds with them, then any charges brought by a special counsel in any case are gone.

            Have you been paying attention? For the last two and a half years, we’ve seen the entire court system bend over backwards to carve out special exemptions that only apply to Trump, or make Trump exempt from certain laws because reasons. Trump has received special accomodations for no reason other than the fact that he’s Donald Trump. They could very easily declare that the Supreme Court will determine which special counsels are valid and which ones aren’t on a case-by-case basis. And in this case, the special counsel is invalid because Trump couldn’t have been investigated for official acts in the first place, per their previous ruling. And since this presidential immunity doesn’t also cover the president’s children, the special counsel in that case is valid and therefore Hunter’s conviction stands.

            If you objectively follow the logic of their previous rulings, this is pretty much where that road leads to. Special counsels investigating Trump are invalid because Trump is covered by Presidential immunity. Special counsels against Hunter biden are valid because that immunity doesn’t cover a president’s son (until Eric, Don, Ivanka, or Jared need it to). Special counsels currently investigating Biden are valid because it’s not the court’s place to interfere in ongoing investigations, and removing the special counsels would be too disruptive. Or something. It makes sense as long as you don’t think about it too hard. Or at all. Or if you’re a brazenly corrupt Supreme Court judge.

            Precedent doesn’t matter any more. The rules now apply when the Supreme Court says they do. And if they say that the rule only applies to Trump because fuck you that’s why, they’re going to say that the rule only applies to Trump because fuck you that’s why.

  • mkhopper@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    And he slides out of another one… Fucker is so slippery that even bullets don’t stick.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      This gave Jack Smith the ability to take this and appeal it, which he previously could not do because she refused to publish actual orders ever since Smith appealed a previous bad decision by her and won.

      There is simply no way Smith loses this appeal, it will end up in the Supreme Court and that is where the final nail will fall for this case.

      Furthermore, she had a FUCK TON of things to make a decision on that were key to the case, thus when she is removed those decisions can still be made instead of the next judge inheriting her bullshit. There is still hope, which is pathetic that we need any but it is what it is.

      • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        And the odds of any of that happening is vanishingly small if Trump wins. Even if he doesn’t, I think he won’t see any serious consequences from this. In court, anyway.

  • FleetingTit@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    The system of the USA only works, if the president is a good person, caring for the good of the nation and all of its citizens.

    Trump and his cronies are bad people though, and the house of cards that is the constitution and the separation of powers falls apart.

  • blazera@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    This is a complete denial of the authority of both the executive and legislative branches. It was a congressional law passed that created the department of justice and explicitly gave the attorney general the authority to prosecute for any crimes the United States has a stake in.

    • Marleyinoc@lemmy.world
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      That was so Republicans could go after Democrats. It’s totally different now that Daddy Trump is being held accountable for his crimes.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I hate to say it, and I know it’s going to sound fatalistic, but her decision is very likely going to stand.

    Clarence Thomas literally handed her this argument on a silver platter. And say what you will about him, the legal system still considers him one of nine justices of the highest court in the land, and his words still carry that legal weight.

    If Jack Smith appeals, there’s (IMO), a 50/50 chance he wins on appeal. I could see the appeals court using things like logic and rational thought, kicking Cannon off the case and reinstating the charges against Trump (Or however that would work in the legal sense). But I could also see them saying that since she was merely following what Clarence Thomas told her to do, her decision is on sound legal footing, would most likely survive Supreme Court scrutiny, her decision was proper based on the SC ruling, and the decision stands. And from a strictly legal standpoint, they’d be right in doing so.

    And if this case were to make it all the way up to the SC…since Cannon was literally following their blueprint, there’s 0% chance that they’ll suddenly rule against her. Nothing good can come out of appealing to the Supreme Court, and in fact it may be exactly what this supreme court wants and why Clarence Thomas added that little tidbit into the decision, so the SC can rule that all special counsels are illegal and the entire J6 investigation was unconstitutional as a result.

    (Of course, Hunter Biden’s conviction will still stand, because reasons…)

    This case is dead. The other three are on life support, and the doctor has already called for the chaplain to deliver last rites.

    • Norgoroth@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It’s even worse than that, it had nothing to do with Thomas or SC. She claims the AG has no constitutional authority to appoint a special counsel.

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Because Thomas literally gave her that argument to make in the immunity ruling. She literally cited his comments and basically copied his ruling like a high school kid copying off the “smart” kid in the class.

        He basically told her “Hey, throw the case out. We’ve got your back.”

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            That’s the Thomas two-step. He uses these concurrences to issue marching orders to the judges below him, so that it can be challenged up to the Supreme Court and then his concurrence becomes precedent.

            • Nastybutler@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Thomas is not the supreme court. And he’s starting to alienate himself from even the other conservative justices. He’s on an island and I doubt the others would follow his lead if this reaches SCOTUS on appeal.

              • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Thomas is not the supreme court. And he’s starting to alienate himself from even the other conservative justices. He’s on an island and I doubt the others would follow his lead if this reaches SCOTUS on appeal.

                None of them went out of their way to distance themselves from his comments, either. They didn’t offer any kind of dissenting opinon. They didn’t speak out against his advisory opinion, which is supposed to be against SC norms. And they haven’t spoken out since. And given their rulings since gaining the supermajority, along with their “nuke it and everything close to it” approach to ruling on matters, and there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t gladly just go along with whatever Clarence Thomas says, or at the very least, not care enough to vote against him.

                This isn’t even the first time he gave an advisory opinion. Remember the literal list of cases he said he wanted to review and overturn? He wouldn’t be so brazenly and openly giving these literal roadmaps of what cases to bring before them if he didn’t believe he had at least four more votes. And none of them have given us any reason to believe otherwise.

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                2 months ago

                They’ll rule it’s Constitutional to hunt Democrats for their pelts and you’ll still be pretending the Court is legitimate. 🙄