Judge Cannon—Yes, Judge Cannon!—Just Shot Down a Trump Delay Tactic

Judge Aileen Cannon isn’t buying Donald Trump’s newest delay tactic in the classified documents case.

On Thursday, Cannon, a Trump-appointed judge, shot down the GOP front-runner’s latest effort to postpone pretrial deadlines, instead opting to keep that date set on February 22.

But the ruling comes with an exception—noting that she’ll still consider measures filed at the eleventh hour if the legal teams can prove they’re necessary.

Although small, it’s another recent indication that Cannon—who has reportedly taken a leisurely approach to the case’s pretrial proceedings—is looking to push forward.

Last week, Cannon pushed back against another Trump team request with a similar friendly addendum, refusing to delay the trial itself while writing in a nine-page order that they could revisit the schedule come March.

Postponing this criminal trial until the November election means that Trump will possibly never have to answer for allegedly stealing droves of classified documents from the federal government. Should he win reelection to the White House, Trump is expected to direct the Department of Justice to shut the trial down.

Trump faces 40 felony charges in the case: 32 charges for violating the Espionage Act by retaining at least 102 documents with classified documents, six charges for obstruction, and two for making false statements regarding his possession of the documents.

Two of his associates are also charged in the case—longtime aide Walt Nauta, who’s charged with six felonies, and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira, who faces four felonies. Both of them, along with Trump, attempted to destroy security footage after federal officials requested it, according to a superseding indictment released July 2023.

The trial is currently scheduled for May 20, in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was visibly furious on Thursday as she took the stand in a trial deliberating her future prosecuting Donald Trump’s alleged election interference in Georgia.

Willis is accused of hiring special prosecutor Nathan Wade—a man she had a relationship with and whom her office paid $650,000 to help build the case against Trump—for personal financial gain. The two have taken several international vacations together, which critics have claimed were partially bankrolled by public funds.

“I’ve been very anxious to have this conversation with you today,” Willis told defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant.

“It’s ridiculous to me that you lied on Monday and yet here we are,” she added.

Willis and Wade have maintained that their relationship started after he was hired onto the case. But a former friend and co-worker of Willis’s, former Fulton County District Attorney’s Office employee Robin Yeartie, told the court on Thursday that she had “no doubt” that Willis and Wade’s romantic relationship began at a municipal judge conference in 2019—three years earlier than the couple claims.

But Willis quickly refuted that narrative after taking the stand, calling the suggestion that she began sleeping with and dating Wade shortly after meeting him “highly offensive,” while describing Wade as a “good friend” and “personal mentor.”

Further in her defense, Willis fiercely rebutted any significant attachment to Yeartie.

“Robin did not go to my college,” Willis contested. “I met her through some people I knew in college. We hung out a bit, not much because she was in Baltimore and I was in D.C. … after college I lost contact with her. I probably didn’t see her again until seven or eight years ago, a chance meeting in Atlanta. But we did not have a consistent relationship.”

“There’s a saying, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ I think that she betrayed our friendship,” she added.

And in regards to the money—Willis claims she paid for all her share of the vacations out of a stockpile of cash she keeps in her home, which she noted can add up to $15,000 at times.

“You’re confused. You think I’m on trial; these people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial,” Willis told Merchant.

It was a hearing filled with frustrations for the district attorney, who grew more visibly irate as the proceeding continued. At one point, Willis held up several packets of documents, claiming that Merchant “lied” in each of them—an explosion that resulted in the court taking a five-minute break.

Willis’s removal from the case would be an incredible blow to one of four criminal trials that Trump is anticipated to undergo before the 2024 general election, adding an additional delay that may prolong the amount of time before the former president is tried on racketeering charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

Trump is trying any legal defense he can get his hands on, and making up entirely new ones.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday outside his hush-money trial, Trump tried a new defense: Even if he’s found guilty, he didn’t commit a crime or at least shouldn’t be punished for it.

“I shouldn’t be in a courthouse,” said the former president, clearly spinning out over having to attend his first criminal court case of many.

“Even if he was guilty of something, there is no crime,” Trump told reporters outside the courthouse, speaking in the third person.

It’s unclear what Trump means here, but it’s clear he’s making it up on the fly. Trump is accused of 34 felony charges over falsifying business records for his payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, in exchange for their silence ahead of the 2016 election. Something that is absolutely a crime.

“We want delays,” Trump added in the press conference. Unfortunately, he won’t get them.

Judge Juan Manuel Merchan decided at the hearing on Thursday that the trial will begin March 25 as planned.

Meanwhile, the South Carolina Republican primary is less than 10 days away, and Trump is stressed about how to make it to all his court appearances and campaign stops.

“How can you run for election and be sitting in a courthouse in Manhattan all day long?”

We’re asking the same question.

After Republican Mazi Melesa Pilip lost the New York special election to replace George Santos’s empty House seat, Representative Matt Gaetz made sure to take time to tear down his fellow party member.

“It turns out DEI isn’t a real good strategy for Republican candidate recruitment,” Gaetz said in an interview with Newsmax.

Gaetz went on to trash Pilip, who was born in Ethiopia and holds both American and Israeli citizenship, calling her a “very foolish woman.” Donald Trump used the exact same words in a Truth Social post Tuesday night, and added that Pilip lost because she did not endorse him.

Similarly, Gaetz’s main line of attack, besides dog whistles, was criticizing Pilip for not fully embracing Trump. “Look, if you don’t want to run as a Donald Trump Republican, what are you even doing running in 2024 on our side? Get on board.”

“George Santos stood with President Trump, backed the America First agenda, and he ultimately prevailed, so now the very New Yorkers who threw George Santos out see their own ranks diminished and they welcome back Democrat Tom Suozzi,” Gaetz continued.

There are plenty of reasons Republicans lost this seat: Santos’s antics, the GOP’s do-nothing disaster of a term, or even the fact that the district often leans Democratic— but DEI isn’t the boogeyman Gaetz makes it out to be. 

With Santos replaced by a Democrat, the House GOP majority will further shrink. The razor-thin majority means even more tension for Speaker Mike Johnson, who was already struggling to get his party to pass any legislation.

Things suddenly don’t look so good for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose statements on the duration of her relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade was directly contradicted by a friend taking the stand on Thursday.

Robin Yeartie, a college friend of Willis’s and former Fulton county district attorney’s office employee, told the court that Willis’s relationship with Wade began in 2019—three years earlier than the couple claims, and before Wade was hired on in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants. Yeartie added that the couple’s relationship remained constant.

“You have no doubt that their romantic relationship was in effect from 2019 until the last time you spoke with her?” asked defense lawyer Ashleigh Merchant.

“No doubt,” Yeartie said.

Yeartie also mentioned that she had stopped speaking to Willis in March 2022 over a “situation” that led to the end of her friendship with Willis and a professional fork in the road—resign or be fired.

Meanwhile, Trump and several of his co-defendants have used the romantic entanglement as a legal basis to request that Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee disqualify her and throw out the case entirely.

In a court filing, Trump’s legal team alleged that Willis and Wade had an “improper intimate personal relationship,” taking lavish vacations including Caribbean cruises paid for in part by $650,000 that Wade billed Willis’s office to prosecute the case.

Willis has denied those allegations, claiming that their relationship began in 2022, after Wade was introduced to the case, and that they each paid their own share of the vacation.

“The state has admitted a relationship existed, and so what remains to be proven is the existence and extent of any financial benefit, if there even was one,” McAfee said.

Willis’s removal from the case would be an incredible blow to one of four criminal trials that Trump is anticipated to undergo before the 2024 general election, adding an additional delay that may continue to prolong the amount of time before the former president is tried on racketeering charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.