Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Judge Cannon DISMISSES Trump Document Case

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Legal AF Hosts Ben Meiselas, Michael Popok, and Karen Agnifolo respond to the breaking news that Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the Mar-A-Lago document case finding the special counsel was unlawfully appointed. Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join the Legal AF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/LegalAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Just moments ago, federal judge Eileen Cannon dismissed the Mar-a-Lago document case after Donald Trump filed a motion to dismiss under a violation of the appointment clause Donald Trump alleged. here's the order, we'll pull it up right now for you. You see it right there, order granting motion

to dismiss superseding indictment based on appointment clause violation. It says for the reasons set forth above, it is ordered and adjudged as follows. Defendants, Donald Trump and his co-defendants, motion to dismiss the superseding indictment, meaning the entire case, based on unlawful appointment and funding of special counsel Jack Smith,

is granted in accordance with this order. The superseding indictment, meaning again, the entire case, is dismissed. granted in accordance with this order, the superseding indictment, meaning again, the entire case is dismissed. This order is confined to this proceeding, meaning that it doesn't affect any other court proceedings that involve a special counsel. The court decides no other legal rights or claims. Four, the order shall not affect or weaken any of the protections for classified information imposed

in this case or any protective orders pertaining to the classified information. 5. The clerk is directed to close this case. Any scheduled hearings are canceled. Any pending motions are denied as moot. And any pending deadlines are terminated, done and ordered. In the chambers of Fort Pierce, Florida, this the 15th day of July 2024. I also have with me for this very, very significant ruling, Michael Popak and Karen Friedman-Agnifilo, both the other co-hosts of Legal AF. I want to turn it over to you in a moment, Michael Popok, and to you, Karen Friedman-Agnifilo. I just want to read a little bit more from the order

before kind of giving any additional commentary, just so people can hear the order. So at the first page of the order says one more time, former President Trump's motion to dismiss the indictment based on the unlawful appointment and funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith is granted in accordance with this order. The superseding indictment is dismissed because special counsel Jack Smith's appointment violates the appointment clause of the United States Constitution Article 2 Section 2 Clause 2 special counsel Smith's use of permanent indefinite appropriations also violates the appropriations also violates the appropriations clause, Article

1, Section 9, Clause 7, but the court need not address the proper remedy for that funding violation given the dismissal of appointments clause grounds. The effect of this order is confined to this proceeding. The analysis then goes on to explain in Judge Eileen Cannon's really first of its kind order because this issue has gone before courts across the country before who didn't even entertain it. It was addressed by the Supreme Court before decades ago where they've always found that the special counsel is appropriate. Special counsels have always existed.

Just think about it. There's a special counsel who prosecuted Hunter Biden. There was a special counsel appointed by Bill Barr. There are special counsels appointed all the time. But notice that Judge Cannon says, just as it relates to Donald Trump, just as it relates here I'm confining my order here. All those other special counsels in history, y'all can deal with that separately. But when it relates to Donald Trump, I think unlawfully appointed, unlawfully appropriated.

And so I'm dismissing this case. Now of course, Special Counsel Jack Smith is going to appeal this to the 11th circuit. I also think special counsel Jack Smith is going to seek to have judge Eileen Cannon removed. What judge Eileen Cannon essentially says in this order though, is that under the appointments clause of the constitution, she says that special counsel Jack Smith is an inferior officer, but he has roles and responsibilities of a superior officer. And as a result, special counsel Jack Smith cannot just be selected by the attorney general, is the argument that Trump made and that Judge Eileen Cannon accepted that instead he would have

to be that Jack Smith would have had to have been appointed by the president confirmed by the Senate and special appropriations, although she didn't really get into the appropriations issue would have had to been made for that position, which it wasn't. And as a result, because that process didn't happen, Judge Cannon says case dismissed. One other point to make as well,

then I'm gonna turn it over to you, Michael Popak, is we talked about how in the Supreme Court's absolute immunity order, despite the fact that this appointment clause issue was not even an issue raised. We talked about it here on Legal AF, that Justice Clarence Thomas, in a separate concurring opinion,

stated that he believed that special counsel Jack Smith and special counsels in general were unlawfully appointed. And as we described it, Judge Clarence Thomas, Justice Thomas was sending a message to Judge Eileen Cannon to dismiss this case. Now throughout this 93 page order by Judge Eileen Cannon dismissing the case, there are constant citations to Justice Clarence Thomas's concurrence, essentially from Clarence Thomas's message to her is cited over and over again. Take a look at just some of this highlighted language.

You see right there on the bottom, that's footnote 20, citing Clarence Thomas. There's another portion citing Clarence Thomas, a more highlighted language, talking about the pre-revolutionary official appointments and how Justice Clarence Thomas in his warped way said, look, our founders didn't want a monarchy. So as a result, you have to go through these steps. Nonetheless, we're going to say

that there should be absolute immunity, even though they don't want a monarchy, but there shouldn't be special councils. Anyway, she bought that. Michael Popok, let me turn it over to you next. But the headline here is Mar-a-Lago document case dismissed by Judge Eileen Cannon. It's gone, it's done. Now, Judge, now Special Counsel

Jack Smith will appeal it to the 11th Circuit. Done with such misplaced confidence that she didn't even stay her order to give the Department of Justice Special Counsel's office time to appeal it to the 11th Circuit. They will. We finally have in a big way in this 93 page decision, a decision by Judge Cannon, it's wrong. We'll talk about a little bit here in my piece why I believe it's wrong. And give an opening, as you said, Ben, to the Department of Justice and the Special Counsel's Office. They're together. I know she likes to act like he's just a stranger to these proceedings. He's just a stranger to these proceedings.

He's just a drive by a regular citizen that just happens to be prosecuting a case and that way she can ignore all of the language in statutes that have been authorized by Congress, which is what matters to allow the attorney general to do exactly what he did in this case with a mechanism that has been around for the last 20 or 30 years not only not challenged but implicitly approved by various courts. She quickly dispatches all of even though it's 93 pages it sounds like wow there must be a lot of real detail in there not at the points that matter not at the points that matter. Not at the points that matter. When you talk about particularly 28 USC,

the particular statutes that Congress authorized that the Department of Justice and the Attorney General Merrick Garland relies on, or any Attorney General relies on, primarily 28 USC section 510 and 515, she does it in a paragraph and a half and says case closed, doesn't refer to any of the legislative history that would shine a light as the language, and then contorts the expressed language, sometimes with reference to, you know, Webster's dictionary, of what it actually says, which to any thinking human being, especially based on the legislative history behind each of the passages of the statutes, allows for the creation of just this type of special council that reports directly to the Department of Justice and to the Attorney General.

Before I dive into that, let me just touch on something. The as to what's going to happen next, you're going to see an appeal to the 11th Circuit here in Florida. The 11th Circuit already found that Judge Cannon was wrong fundamentally prior to the indictment even being issued in this case, twice, in her interference with the criminal proceeding. This will be, if they agree with our analysis, this will be her third major strike in the case.

And I think not only should they reverse her on this, her adoption of what is amounts to a fringe theory that has been lurking around, talk about zombie cases, it is a zombie theory that has been lurking around the right MAGA federalist society. It was brought forward first by the Landmark Legal Defense Fund or Legal Foundation who filed an amicus brief that was also used by Judge Thomas. So the connective tissue between Thomas and this order is the Landmark Foundation amicus brief, which gets mentioned time and time again throughout the 93 pages. It was a fringe analysis before, it remains a fringe analysis now. Just the language, I'll just read it for our

audience. 28 USC section 1515 says the following about the powers of the Attorney General. And I'll just refer to the language that's quoted. The Attorney General or any other officer of the Department of Justice or any attorney specially appointed by the Attorney General under law may, when specially attorney general or any other officer of the Department of Justice or any attorney specially appointed by the attorney general under law may when specially directed by the attorney general conduct any kind of legal proceedings civil or criminal including grand jury proceedings which United States attorneys are authorized by law to conduct. Okay that on its face sounds like the Jack Smith special counsel position falls within

A. If you don't like A, let's go to B of the statute. Each attorney specially retained under authority of the Department of Justice shall be commissioned as special assistant to the attorney general or special attorney and shall take the oath required by law. That all happened here. The attorney general shall fix the annual salary of a special assistant or special attorney. Well, she quickly in one paragraph says, well, that doesn't apply. Why? Where's the legislative background or legislative history? No, to her, it's not a proper

appointment and case closed. The arguments don't square, she says, with the statutory text, context or history, then she doesn't provide any in her 93 pages of filler, a filler argument. She is going to lose on the appointment issue. But here is the, I'll leave my segment on this. Here is the domino effect of this. First of all, let's look at timing.

After the shooting in Pennsylvania and just before the Republican National Convention. Sure, she's been sitting on this 93 pages for a few days now. She didn't just create it like it's in Pennsylvania, but look at the timing. She wanted Donald Trump to not only get the benefit of the dismissal of the case, but get it to give him maximum a wind at his sail

that going into the convention. There's no other way to put it. Talk about looking at the political map to decide when you're going to drop your opinion. There's no other way to interpret this. I was doing a hot take this morning about the impact of the shooting on all of the cases, and as I was doing the hot take, this came up with her granting the dismissal. That's one. Second impact is going to be this sort of immediate appeal to the 11th Circuit, which we'll have to see how quickly justice, if it's Chief Judge Pryor

again or someone else, the three-judge panel, how quickly they set a briefing schedule on this to get this case back on track. While that happens, around the country, wherever there's been a special counsel, Washington, D.C DC with Judge Chutkin and Donald Trump, we're gonna see a filing citing to this. Filings by, in Hunter Biden, as you mentioned, the Hunter Biden prosecution, there's a special counsel there. Hunter Biden should be filing a similar motion,

which puts him at odds potentially with his father's Department of Justice position about this particular case. I'm not sure Hunter goes right along with that immediately out of the box. But in Chutkin, where she's gonna to bring the parties back into the beginning of August, there's going to be a new motion citing to this case. Now she doesn't have to adopt it. It's not precedent anywhere but in Florida and at the district court level unless and until the 11th

Circuit, the highest court in Florida for federal, makes its ruling. Her ruling is the ruling subject to the 11th Circuit, but it's not binding on Judge Chutkin, though it will be cited along with the Clarence Thomas concurrence in what will be filed by Donald Trump, I don't know, in the next hour, to put it before, front and center before Judge Chutkin. So we could also have a split circuit, because even if the 11th Circuit affirms somehow, and I think it's unlikely, Judge Cannon, Aileen Cannon's decision, the DC circuit, even though it's been a little bit singed lately by the reversals and vacating by the Supreme Court, I would think would rule the opposite direction.

Then we have a split in the circuits and we've got an immediate appeal to the United States Supreme Court. In any event, as we said a long time ago, as soon as July 1 immunity decision dropped, it was the death knell and that the case in Florida was probably DOA given Judge Cannon's already jaundiced view towards the case, her constant fighting with the prosecutors, including about this particular oral argument where James Pierce slapped his forehead at some point, and the judge says, maybe you should, maybe another one of your lawyers should argue this, and you're being very impertinent to me. We knew this was going really, really badly off the oral argument. Now, Department of Justice Special Counsel's office has to pick up the pieces. Last comment. Her fundamental argument in Judge Cannon's 93 pages is that the special counsel is not

an employee of the Department of Justice. He's a stranger to these proceedings and he has no place prosecuting. That is fundamentally wrong. He's on the payroll of the Department of Justice through an appropriations. He's been specially appointed as a special attorney under these particular rules and regulations and Congress approved rules and every court that's ever looked at it, including the United States Supreme Court implicitly in its own ruling. People like to jump up and down and say, it wasn't briefed before the Supreme Court when

they made their immunity decision on the jurisdiction. A Supreme Court or any appellate court can make its own determination about issues that are fundamental about a case that are not briefed by the parties. They didn't do it here. And I think there's not a majority on the United States Supreme Court to find that the special counsel has to be appointed and approved and confirmed through a Senate confirmation process. and approved and confirmed through a Senate confirmation process. I want to hear from you next, Karen Friedman Agnifilo. Yeah, I mean, this is just, I agree completely with everything that you guys are saying, especially the timing of this. The fact that she did this the day of the Republican Convention, this is a 93 page decision that has a lot of legal kind of contortions in it. You don't do that overnight. And this, you know, she's famous for these minute orders where she kind of just does these paperless minute orders that are one or two lines long. This was a masterwork of hers that she's been working on

for a long time, I would argue even longer than July 1st with the immunity decision being given the gift from Clarence Thomas basically signaling to her and his concurrence that this is what she should do. You're 100 right, Popak. This comes from the Federalist Society's amicus brief that they filed and their legal reasoning and the thing that's been floating around for a long time and she's been waiting and waiting to do this. But I want to talk about the positives here. And the reason there are some positives and some hope here that for everybody to think about. Number one, Judge Cannon has given Jack Smith a gift. He can finally say an appeal and basically ask her to be recused from this case

because of what she has done over and over and over again. It's like he's been waiting for the right thing. He finally has something he can appeal in that area. Second of all, there's been so many issues before her that she never decided much of the classified information procedures, acts, orders, also just the presidential immunity and determining what was a core presidential function, what was unofficial, what was official. She didn't decide any of that. And the reason that's significant

is it's not quote law of the case. Because if she had made all these rulings pre-trial, any judge that would take over this case, it's very difficult to look at the law of the case de novo or anew. And so they would have been stuck with her crazy rulings. So this gives some hope. If she had, again, if she had, thank God she dismissed this case, she can no longer now

rule on all of these decisions that are outstanding, that she just, we've been complaining that she's dragging her feet on, right? All the motions in limiting, all the classified information procedures act motions, and most significantly determining what apply, when presidential immunity would apply in this particular case to what pieces of evidence, to which charges, etc. So all of that is still up for grabs, thankfully. So hopefully the 11th Circuit will say that this is crazy, so crazy, such a fringe ruling, so not the law, that as you said, Popak, this is her third strike, that we are going to remove her. I hope Jack Smith makes a recusal motion when he appeals this and then he can go and get another judge. They can rule on all of these issues and the

trial, if it ever happens, at least might be based somewhere on the law. But Judge Cannon, it's been clear to everybody, has been looking for a way to dismiss this case all along. This is what she wanted to do. This is why when she said, oh, you know what? I'm going to have oral arguments on this issue. I'm going to allow strangers, right? They call them amici or friends of the court. I'm going to allow strangers who aren't parties,

who have nothing to do with this issue, to come and argue and give oral arguments in addition to put in briefs. And she just used that information and those legal arguments to base her decision. And like I said, she did exactly what she has been planning on doing all along. So I do think that in some ways, this is okay. It's finally the thing that will get her off the case. It's finally the thing that will get a real judge to make real rulings based on the law.

And nothing's happening before the election, but at least the case could be salvaged at some point. But she's been waiting to do this all along. Now you make a great point, Karen. It's such an outlandish area to go in almost kind of tinfoil hat style ruling that it's such an embarrassment to conservative judges as well. As I mentioned at the outset, special councils have been used in conservative administrations and actually conservative administrations, Republican administrations throughout history as well.

This isn't some device that's been invented by the Biden administration. It's been used frequently over and over again. In fact, in Jack Smith's briefs, he showed all the times where Bill Barr appointed special counsels. The history of this is not something that is unique or innovative or shocking or surprising.

So the fact that this is the issue where she basically said, I'm dismissing on this, I do think of special counsel, Jack Smith now it is the opportunity, not just to say reverse her, but this judge is a danger. This judge is a threat. This judge violates the law. This judge is a hack. I think that's what we'll see. Thank you, Michael Popak, Karen Friedman, Agnifilo for joining in this

comprehensive coverage of this breaking news decision. We didn't have legal AF over the weekend because of obviously the breaking news where Midas Touch focused, but you know, doing a little bit of a longer take on this, I think was was significant. Thank you everybody for watching. Hit subscribe on this channel. Let's get to three million subscribers. We'll keep you updated as we learn more throughout the day. Love this video? Make sure you stay up to date on the latest breaking news and all things We'll keep you updated as we learn more throughout the day.