Even as the judgeās latest moves show sheās carefully disguising her advocacy for Trump, he is making it clear that he expects her to save him.
When Judge Aileen CannonĀ handed downĀ her latest ruling in the prosecution of Donald Trump for stealing classified documents, many legal observersĀ immediately understoodĀ the shady gamesmanship lurking behind it. She did, technically, rule against Trump by refusing to dismiss the caseābut actually made it easier for herself to kill the case later, or to steer a jury toward an acquittal.
Trumpās lawyers had argued that the Presidential Records Act, which was passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, allowed him to reclassify national security documents as his personal property. Thatās aĀ grotesque misreadingĀ of the lawās history and intent, and Cannon appeared to agree, declaring that the PRA ādoes not provide a pre-trial basis to dismissā the case. The media reported this as a partial āwinā for special counsel Jack Smithās prosecution team.
But as constitutional scholar Laurence TribeĀ put it, this was a āpretendā ruling against Trump that ended up āreservingā Cannonās ability to decide the case for Trump in a way that cannot be appealed. In short, Cannon seems to recognize that as she moves toward that endgame, itās essential to maintain plausible deniability throughout.
āJudge Cannon is being canny in her Trump-protective approach,ā Lee Kovarsky, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told me.
trump isnāt accidentally doing anything at all, he said he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue, heās doing this all out in public, just like everything else, and daring the united states justice system to be able to do anything meaningful to him at all. this isnāt a gotcha, itās a so fucking what. he doesnāt care. almost half the population of the united states is betting the other half canāt do a fucking thing about it, and so far, theyāve been right.
*wonāt. Wonāt do a thing about it.