Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Judge Cannon SLAPPED with Removal DEMAND…From GOP?!!

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

A group of republican leaders including from within the Trump Administration have filed a new brief calling for the immediate removal and reassignment of Judge Cannon and to have the Trump Mar a Lago indictment reinstated. Michael Popok analyzes the factors and statutes that should lead the 11th Circuit to get rid of Judge Cannon once and for all. Unlock your brain’s full potential FREE for 30 days by going to https://brain.fm/LEGALAF 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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It's an Uber account that allows your team to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your team to your Uber account today. This is Michael Popak, Legal AF. We got a new bombshell brief just filed with the 11th Circuit by leading Republican, constitutional, and presidential scholars, including George Conway and Lawrence Tribe of the Harvard Law School, all demanding the same thing. They all want Aileen Cannon, the judge in the Mar-a-Lago case, immediately removed and

reassigned by the 11th Circuit because of her consistently wrong-headed, unconstitutional, unprecedented rulings in the Mar-a-Lago case, all culminating in her decision to dismiss the indictment, the 40-crime indictment against Donald Trump, because she found first time in federal jurisprudential history of our republic that there's the special counsel, independent counsel, special prosecutor, is improper, is illegitimate, is improperly funded, isn't what we call an inferior officer under the appointments clause of the Constitution. Not only is she wrong, not only is this the third time at least fundamentally she's been wrong as a

federal judge and of course her patron is Donald Trump who put her on the bench, but she's so wrong that it now violates a leading case in the 11th Circuit that's relied upon in the amicus brief called US v. Torkington and the Torkington factors, which if you follow Legal AF, we've been talking about for over a year. There's three major factors that this brief argues have been violated and give the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals the right to remove Judge Cannon based on 11th Circuit precedent of its own jurisdiction, its own district. The first is that it is clear based on the decision that if they grant the appeal

and if they rule in favor of the Department of Justice and reinstate the indictment and do what's called a remand, sending it back to the district court judge for further proceedings that because of her prior wrongheaded, illogical, improper legal reasoning, she will be unable, now that she's painted herself into the corner, she will be unable, find it difficult

to put aside her prior rulings and do what the appellate court is going to demand that she do with a remand. See, generally at the appellate level, if they reverse a decision of a trial judge, they send it back to the trial judge on what's called remand with instructions to do the case right this time,

following the guidance and the direction and the orders and the precedent now being set by the appellate court. But under one of the three torquing 10 factors named after a case in the 11th circuit, if the court determines based on her screwing up three times earlier, including when she interfered with the ongoing criminal investigation before an indictment was even brought,

when two years ago when they executed the search warrant and she decided to stick her big fat thumb on the scales of justice in favor of Donald Trump and she interfered and called everybody into her courtroom and started talking about the search warrant and how she had to set up special procedures because he used to be the president of the United States and set up a special master to come look at documents and the 11th Circuit twice said wrong. You're a federal district judge. You're

not to interfere unless and until you get involved only when there's an indictment, not pre-indictment. And they sent it back to her. Now, having dismissed the indictment because she listened to the love notes being sent to her by Clarence Thomas on the United States Supreme Court, who in a ruling in July as part of his decision, actually wrote a note that we talked about on Legal AF, wrote a note to Aline Cannon, who he supervises because he's the head of the 11th Circuit as the sitting Supreme Court justice. He said to her, I think you should challenge Jack Smith that he's not a special, the special prosecutor, special counsel is

illegitimate. It's not properly appointed under the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution because he's not an inferior officer. He's just quote-unquote a private citizen. And Aileen Cannon heard that and said, yeah, it's a good idea. I'm going to dismiss the indictment. First time in over 150 years, a federal judge has not properly recognized the existence of a special prosecutor or special counsel in violation of US Supreme Court precedent from 1974 in a little case we like to call Nixon versus the United States in which they recognized and validated the use of a special prosecutor. That's a problem for Aileen Cannon. But this brief is calling for her removal under the Torkington factors. Here's the three factors. If it's sent back to her,

she won't be able to, she'll find it difficult to put aside her prior rulings and her prior logic and judgment in moving the case forward. That's obvious too. There is a, the public justice, the public looking at her actions would doubt her impartiality. I mean, who doesn't doubt her impartiality in the way she's bent over backwards time and time again to rule against the Department of Justice and in favor of the defendant, culminating in this extraordinary, unprecedented dismissal of the indictment. The public is pissed. The public is upset and the public has doubts

about her impartiality. And therefore, in order to preserve integrity of the justice system, second, Torkenton factor, you gotta get rid rid of Alien Cannon. And the third is that they balance as an appellate court, what is the harm to the case versus the resources that'll be used when it's reassigned to a new judge. And in the case of Alien Cannon, who's been dragging her feet for the last year and a half to two years, to give Donald Trump what he wanted, delay, delay, delay, decisions that should have been made by a judge that knows what they're doing, like Judge Chutkin in District of Columbia. Things got made in a day, a week, maybe two

weeks. Alien Cannon sits on it for three months, four months, six months, a year, or hasn't ruled on it at all. And all you've got to do is look at the docket for that, which the 11th Circuit will take a look at the docket. So they're gonna say, this case is stuck in the mud with a trial judge that doesn't know what she's doing and is improperly analyzing things and has made three fundamental errors already on one case. And therefore switching over to a new judge

will actually preserve justice and speedy trial because they'll do what she hasn't done which is to expedite the case and move it towards trial. Let's turn it, that's the third Torkenton factor. Now for those out there, you may be wondering, well, how many times did the judge screw up in the Torkenton case, which was over a $27 counterfeit Rolex where the judge like Aileen Cannon dismissed the case

arguing that nobody could have thought that the $27 Rolex was real and therefore undermine the criminal prosecution. That was wrong and the 11th Circuit said the judge was wrong and based on that one ruling under the factors that they established that this judge looks like he's not gonna be able to recover from this major decision just one screw up and they took the case away from the judge in Torkington. We have multiple, multiple major violations and cardinal sins committed by Judge Cannon.

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Let's turn to the brief and the pages of the brief that have now been filed and are sitting with the, uh, with the 11th circuit. And here's how it works. The 11th, the 11th circuit or any appellate court has to vote to accept and agree to accept the advocates brief and rely on it. I, I believe that they both the Crew Brief, the Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, and this brief will be accepted as a part of the pile to be considered by the three-judge 11th Circuit panel. And then they could look at this issue. And the other thing that this brief reminds the court is it's not just the Torquenton factors. You, court,

have the power under a statute, 28 USC 2106. You have the independence ability and power, inherent authority to get rid of alien canon, and you can do it on your own. You don't even have to be asked. I think that's what Jack Smith was making on. There is case law and precedent that says that the appellate court does not have to be asked by any party in order to remove the judge. They can do it on their own with their inherent oversight and supervisory power over district judges underneath them. That's the power of 2106, the statute.

So the combination of Torkington and 2106 and the case law that says you can do it on your own is what they're urging here. Let's talk about who filed this brief because I think it's very, very important. Here's how they identify themselves, just so we're all clear. They say the amici are former prosecutors, elected officials, other government officials, constitutional lawyers, and not-for-profit organizations who have spent decades defending the Constitution, the interests of the American people, and the rule of law. And what they've said is that the court should reject Donald Trump's contention that the appointment of the special counsel is unlawful and reverse the decision below. But they go on. They say here about the the judge, if this on page four, if

this court, the 11th Circuit, reverses the district court, Judge Cannon, as the amici urge, it will mark the second time it has been called upon to correct the district court's grave errors in this case. I would argue that it's the third time. I think there were two issues about the search warrant and one about the special master, and now this is number three. But let's not quibble.

Two or three is two or three too many. Those reversals do not reflect typical differences of opinion among courts and judges. The district court's decision rejecting the lawfulness of the special counsel's appointment and clear defiance of binding Supreme Court precedent, that's US versus Nixon from 1974, and the plain text of Congress's statutes falls far outside the range of reasonable judicial decision-making. And before an indictment in this case was even filed, this court reversed Judge Cannon's

extraordinary intervention into the government's criminal investigation that ultimately led to this prosecution. That's the Mar-a-Lago search warrant that she improperly interfered with. As this court, the 11th Circuit, explained then, the law is clear and the district court, that's Cannon, they're talking about it from two years, a year and a half ago, her unprecedented approach would work a radical reordering of its case law limiting the federal court's involvement in criminal investigations. It would violate bedrock separations

of power and limitations. They go on. The pattern of, this on page five, the pattern of unsupportable decisions along with the district courts inexplicable handling of procedural matters in this case makes clear that Judge Cannon, quote, "'This is from the Torkington case,

has engaged in conduct that gives rise to the appearance of a lack of impartiality in the mind of reasonable member of the public. I think just to stop there before I tell you they now urge the court to get rid of Cannon, I think they could have gone for two more of the Torkington factors. Not to quibble, but I think it's also that the court could find that she's so far painted herself into the corner and is so upside down with her prior orders that she can't be, we can anticipate that she would not be able to set them aside in order to administer justice properly. And I think the third factor also is in favor of removal and reassignment of canon, which is the efficiency of the judicial system would be better served by changing horses and

giving it to a new judge in the Southern District and let them get this case out of the mud and move it towards a trial. So if I were them, I would have done all three factors, but there's also a page limit. So you have that as well. And then they go, you know, to the end, they do a lot in the brief of supporting and reinforcing what Jack Smith had to say about why fundamentally she's wrong that he's not an inferior officer. The way it works is that the apportionments, sorry, the appointments clause of the US Constitution fundamentally says that through the executive branch and its Article 2 powers, that they can, the power of the presidency through its cabinet and its division heads, can give power to the division heads and the division heads can then appoint inferior officers to help them do their job. The division head here would be the attorney general is the head of the Department of Justice,

the inferior officer would be special attorneys, special lawyers, any kind of assistant US attorneys or special counsel appointed by the head of the department. That's a proper inferior officer appointment. And to answer the question, for Aileen Cannon, the drives everybody patty, Jack Smith's not a private citizen. That's just a stranger to the case, like a drive-by prosecutor. He has been appointed appropriately by the Department of Justice and its head, Attorney General

Merrick Garland, and properly funded through allocations of Congress that started with the independent council statute back in the 1990s. That's how they get funded. And he is, he gets a paycheck. I mean, he doesn't get a 1099. He gets a Department of Justice paycheck for the time that he's there. You know, he's not a stranger. You know, Aileen Kenna makes it sound like he's getting a

1099 as an independent contractor. He's not. He and all of his team were ultimately employed by the Department of Justice. It's all consistent with the Supreme Court in 1974, finding that the special prosecutor of Richard Nixon, Leon Jaworski, was properly appointed by the Department of Justice. We've had special prosecutors for over 150 years, starting with Abraham Lincoln. In order to adopt Aileen Cannon's thinking, you have to not know precedent and law for over 150 years.

And that's the problem. Here's the people that joined together, just so you know. We got George Conway, who was on the, who's the board president for the Society of the Rule of Law, and also married to Kellyanne Conway. You got Don Ayer, who was the Deputy Attorney General in the H.W. Bush administration, and was the Deputy Solicitor General at the Supreme Court for the Reagan administration. You got Lou Caldera, who was the Supreme Court for the Reagan administration. You got Lou Caldera, who was the United States Secretary of the Army. He was the secretary of the Army. He

was the director of White House military office and the like. You got Stuart Gerson, who served as the acting attorney general, the assistant attorney general for the civil division and the like. You've got Trevor Potter, who serves as the chairman of the Federal Election Commission. But we continue. You got Lawrence Tribe, one of the leading constitutional scholars. He'd be on the Mount Rushmore of constitutional scholars if they were chiseling a new one today. He's the Carl Loeb University professor of constitutional law at Harvard University and the former director of the Office of Access to Justice in the US Department of Justice, Olivia Troy, who

is the special advisor, Homeland Security and Counterterrorism within the Trump administration to the vice president Mike Pence. Bill Weld, who is the US attorney for Massachusetts and the governor of Massachusetts. You've got the former governor of New Jersey, Christine Todd Whitman, and the like. Powerful amicus briefs now being filed to urge the 11th Circuit to do what I've been calling for on Legal AF for over a year. Use the Torkington case, the three factors of Torkington, to reassign the case in conjunction with the inherent authority and statutory authority of any appellate court to under 28 USC 122106 to remove and reassign the judge.

Give it to one of the other judges that I know and respect in the Southern District of Florida where I practice as a lawyer there and I'm a member of that particular court and an officer of that court I could list for you a dozen almost the entire rest of this proud Southern District of Florida federal bench that would do a better job and re instill confidence in the American people as being impartial fair and impartial jurists that alien cannon. There's ones right up there in West Palm Beach. Don Middlebrooks would be perfect for this case. My gut is that they're going to reassign it, this 11th Circuit panel, and they're going to send it maybe to Celia Altenaga, who's the chief judge of the Southern District sitting in Miami.

I think she would be fantastic. Don Middlebrooks would be fantastic. Darren Gales would be fantastic. And the list goes on. Really, I really can't think of anybody else but Aileen Cannon, who wouldn't do an amazing, appropriate job here to reinstill the integrity of the Southern District of Florida into this case. And this is why things can happen. The remand, meaning the reinstatement of the indictment, the reassignment of the judge. And we get this case back up and running. The simplest prosecution against Donald Trump is Mar-a-Lago, given the weight of the evidence, the amount of the evidence, the video evidence, the audio evidence, the testimony of witnesses against him from all around Mar-a-Lago, how he obstructed justice related to the failure

to return classified top secret documents, including those related to our enemies and our allies and military secrets and tried to hide them from the Department of Justice, the FBI, his own lawyers, and federal judges, including the judge responsible for the ultimate search warrant and subpoenas. We'll continue to follow it all. And what happens next? Donald Trump's asked for another month to file a brief. He's now seen all these amicus briefs.

So in October, we're going to see Donald Trump's brief, and we're going to see one more brief by the appellant, who is the Department of Justice and the Special Counsel. And then sometime in November, probably after the election, we're going to hear from the 11th Circuit about the reinstatement of the Mar-a-Lago case, if not before. We'll follow it all on Legal AF.

And I got great news, Midas, Mighty and Legal AFers. We've got a new Legal AF YouTube channel. Go to YouTube at Legal AFMTN, Legal AFMTN, where I'm curating and the executive producer of everything on that channel, bringing you everything at the intersection of law and politics that you've come to expect and love on the Midas Touch Network. This is in collaboration with them. Here's a new pro-democracy channel that you can join at the very beginning. We want you to be the four millionth subscriber for Midas Touch. I want you to be the 30,000th member of my YouTube channel with Midas Touch over at LegalAF MTN. So until my

next hot take, until my next LegalAF here on the Midas Touch over at LegalAF MTN. So until my next hot take, until my next LegalAF here on the Midas Touch Network, and until my next exclusive content only on where you can free subscribe, the Midas, the LegalAF YouTube channel in collaboration with Midas Touch at LegalAF MTN, this is Michael Popak reporting. Heary, heery, Legal AF Law Breakdown is now in session. Go beyond the headlines and get a deep dive into the important legal concepts you need to know and we discuss every day on Legal AF. Exclusive content you won't find anywhere else,

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