CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The role is typically meant to be that of a neutral custodian of the conversation between the participants, though Tapper’s long history of harshly criticizing Trump while on the air raises questions about his ability to remain even-handed.
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Special Counsel Jack Smith was supposed to be basking in glory right now.
In his ideal world, Smith would be hot off a quick conviction of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. for the former president’s alleged role in the events of January 6 and attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. The special counsel then would have immediately moved his victorious prosecutors to Palm Beach for the summer to prepare for Trump’s second federal trial related to allegedly stealing national defense information and impeding the Department of Justice’s investigation.
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U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon may have just indefinitely postponed Donald Trump’s espionage and obstruction trial but that doesn’t mean her federal courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida will lie dormant over the next few months.
In officially vacating the existing May 20 trial date—an impossibility considering the defendant will be in a Manhattan courtroom for the foreseeable future—Cannon declined to set another date, calling it “imprudent” at this stage of the process. She noted a “myriad” of unresolved matters in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 42-count indictment against the former president and his two co-defendants, Mar-a-Lago employees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Olivera, for willfully retaining national defense information and attempting to impede the government’s investigation.
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Department of Justice records relating to the investigation or prosecutions of former President Donald Trump on Thursday.
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Do not believe the White House/mainstream media-concocted narrative that the four criminal court cases—prosecuted by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis—were not in part coordinated, synchronized, and timed to reach their courtroom psychodramatic finales right during the 2024 campaign season.
These local, state, and federal Lilliputian agendas were designed to tie down, gag, confine, bankrupt, and destroy Trump psychologically and physically. They are the final lawfare denouement to years of extra-legal efforts to emasculate him.
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A group of House Democrats on Friday introduced legislation to strip former President Donald Trump of his Secret Service protection should he be convicted in one of the myriad criminal cases against him.
Trump is currently on trial in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case over allegedly falsifying business records. Trump has pleaded not guilty and contends that the case is part of broader political witch hunt against him. He also faces two separate federal indictments from special counsel Jack Smith and a fourth from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
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In July 2023, Joshua Youngerman was arrested in California on five misdemeanors for his participation in the events of January 6. According to charging documents, Youngerman entered the Capitol at 2:37 p.m. — 20 minutes after the House went into recess amid the escalating chaos — through an open door as Capitol…
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Special counsel Jack Smith criticized the federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial as relying on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” that “would distort the trial,” when she ordered both parties to submit jury instructions.
Smith’s sharp response Tuesday comes after Florida-based U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Canon last month asked attorneys to submit instructions based on two scenarios. In the first one, the jury would consider whether records Trump allegedly possesses are personal or presidential under the Presidential Records Act. The second scenario, Canon wrote, would assume that “the Presidential Records Act gives the president the sole authority to categorize records as personal or presidential during their time in office,” which would make the case significantly more difficult to prosecute.
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Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, who is undergoing lawfare as a result of his representation of Trump in the 2020 election challenges, is facing multiple legal proceedings but is in good spirits.
Eastman, widely considered one of the top legal scholars on the right, who founded the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, served as dean for Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told The Arizona Sun Times during an interview that he remains “cheerful but defiant.”
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I am digging into a few other matters related to this case, the contempt order issued Thursday against veteran investigative reporter Catherine Herridge, and a new appellate court ruling overturning the use of a sentencing enhancement for J6ers convicted of the controversial 1512(c)(2) charge so unfortunately I can’t write a full article on yesterday’s hearing that I attended in person in Fort Pierce. So I want to share my X posts about what happened.
A few additional observations: Judge Cannon’s approach and style is inimical from that of judges in D.C. For part of the proceedings, I kept thinking how DOJ’s J6 prosecution in Washington would be so different if only half the judges were as careful and prepared and nontheatrical as Cannon. I shared this with a J6 defense attorney last night and he agreed.
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