Appearing for the first time at a hearing in the case, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, came to no decision about when to schedule the trial, saying she would issue a written order “promptly.”…
For nearly two hours in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, peppered prosecutors and the former president’s lawyers with questions that suggested she was in command of her courtroom and well-versed in the facts of the case.
Her decision about when to schedule the trial will be an early test for the judge, who came under widespread criticism last year after she rendered some decisions…that were favorable to Mr. Trump…
At one point, Judge Cannon directly asked one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, if he wanted to put off the trial until after the election. When Mr. Kise said he did, Judge Cannon told him that she wanted to focus on near-term issues like the amount of discovery evidence the defense had to review and the types of motions the lawyers planned to file.
As the hearing came to end, Todd Blanche, another one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, asked Judge Cannon if the defense could return to court in November and reassess the trial schedule then. Appearing to pick up on the judge’s desire to create what she called “a road map” for the case, Mr. Blanche said that if a trial date absolutely had to be chosen, he would ask for one in mid-November 2024, after the election.
Judges must be taught this “road map” bit in New Judge School. It sounds good, like they’re “in command” of the courtroom, just as Alan Feuer writes. It’s all to make the judge look good as she postpones the case again and again.
I had one of these “complex” cases one time, a four codefendant case where defendants were added and subtracted. I got appointed to represent my guy in 2018 (!) and when I retired in 2022 the damn cases had still not gone to trial. A “road map” doesn’t tell you how long the road is. I’ll bet Loose Cannon doesn’t bring Codefendant No. 1 to trial until after election day 2024. Imo, Jack Smith has made only one mistake in his investigations, but it is this horrific, perhaps lethal, one, bringing this case in the Southern District of Florida. I fear that it is a decision Smith will regret but once, and that is continuously.
