Cannon seemed to invite Trump to raise the argument again at trial, where Jack Smith can’t appeal, expert says
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday rejected one of former President Donald Trump’s motions to dismiss his classified documents case.
Cannon shot down Trump’s motion arguing that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally vague when applied to a former president.
Cannon after a daylong hearing issued an order saying some of Trump’s arguments warrant “serious consideration” but wrote that no judge has ever found the statute unconstitutional. Cannon said that “rather than prematurely decide now,” she denied the motion so it could be “raised as appropriate in connection with jury-instruction briefing and/or other appropriate motions.”
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“The Judge’s ruling was virtually incomprehensible, even to those of us who speak ‘legal’ as our native language,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wrote on Substack, calling part of her ruling “deliberately dumb.”
“The good news here is temporary,” Vance wrote. “It’s what I’d call an ugly win for the government. The Judge dismissed the vagueness argument—but just for today. She did it ‘without prejudice,’ which means that Trump’s lawyers could raise the argument again later in the case. In fact, the Judge seemed to do just that in her order, essentially inviting the defense to raise the argument again at trial.”
Oh, so that’s how she’s intentionally fucking it up.
To clarify for future confused readers, most of us aren’t mad that she is denying the motions to dismiss, far from it, but we’re mad that she is doing so in a way that allows the defence to use these same ridiculous arguments in court.
The first request is that the “Espionage Act” is too vague to enforce, which is pretty much not how laws work at all. Generally the more vague it is: the more illegal activities fall under it.
The second request is that the Presidential Records Act allows the Trump Admin to decide which documents were personal at will and therefor gives him complete immunity. Which, again, is pure idiocy, but Judge Canon hasn’t even given a ruling on that motion.