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Judge Cannon Sparks Firestorm After Grossly Obvious Team Trump Ruling

Judge Aileen Cannon is drawing ire after her new flimsy ruling to toss Donald Trump’s entire classified documents case.

Judge Aileen Cannon portrait (blue background looks like a yearbook photo)
United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida

It seems like Judge Aileen Cannon is just making it up as she goes along.

On Monday, the Trump-appointed district judge threw out Trump’s entire classified documents case, seemingly using one concurring opinion from the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling as justification to do so. In her 93-page ruling, Cannon ruled that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution—drawing outrage from legal scholars and reporters alike.

Twitter screenshot Qasim Rashid, Esq. @QasimRashid: Understand what Judge Cannon did. She saw the non-stop media coverage of the shooting, used that distraction to overturn decades of legal precedent without citing a single case in her ruling's favor, & dismissed Trump's classified documents case. This is how republics collapse.
Twitter screenshot Noah Rosenblum @narosenblum:
I have been suspicious of the “Judge Cannon is undermining the rule of law to protect Donald Trump” line of argument, mostly because of the extreme rhetoric. I hadn’t been following the case closely though.

Now I feel very naive. This is bonkers. She is just making things up.
Twitter screenshot Bradley P. Moss @BradMossEsq:
Judge Cannon dismissed decades of institutional precedent, years of recent rulings on Mueller and Smith, and pretty much the entire premise of the special counsel regulations.

Her ultimate complaint? Jack Smith is TOO independent.

“Just to be crystal clear: SCOTUS has upheld special counsels repeatedly,” wrote Chris Hates on X. “Cannon is a district court judge, her job is to apply controlling precedent. She’s doing this because she thinks the MAGA court is on the same page as her and Trump’s lawyers and will go along.”

Instead of honoring precedent, Cannon seems to have relied on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the immunity ruling earlier this month. In that decision, Thomas was the only judge to make the argument that the Department of Justice misstepped in its special appointment of Jack Smith. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which has struck down Cannon’s decisions in the past, will take up her decision next.  

Regardless of how the federal courts rule, Cannon will still get to hand Trump a win by continuing to delay Trump’s trial, as she has done for the past 18 months.
One person who isn’t mad? Donald Trump himself. On Truth Social, Trump wrote that the dismissal “should be just the first step,” calling all the cases against him scams, hoaxes, and “Political Attacks,” and further pressing for the  “dismissal of ALL witch hunts” against him.

AOC Rips Into House Democrat Over Anonymous Doomsday Quote

“You should absolutely retire,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at a lectern outside
Steven Ferdman/GC Images

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a strong message for any Democrats in Congress who have “resigned” themselves to a Donald Trump victory: Retire.

A Sunday report in Axios about Democrats discussing Joe Biden’s prospects following Saturday’s assassination attempt against Trump included an anonymous quote from a senior House Democrat: “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s response on X (formerly Twitter) got right to the point.

“If you’re a ‘senior Democrat’ that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism,” she said. “This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people. Retire.”

Twitter screnshot Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC: If you’re a “senior Democrat” that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism. This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people. Retire.

Ocasio-Cortez’s point seems to be that the anonymous Democrat’s attitude flies in the face of the message the party has tried to convey over the past several months, even years, about the right-wing threat to democracy. Ocasio-Cortez was widely criticized for calling Trump a fascist following the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and ever since, that language has become part of mainstream Democratic discourse. No Democrat who has loudly criticized the fascist tendencies of Trump should be now saying, “Well, he’s probably going to win now.”

Trump has never officially conceded losing the 2020 election, repeatedly accusing the media, courts, and voting mechanisms of being rigged against him. When Trump engages in antidemocratic rhetoric, the entire Republican Party falls in line behind him. Ocasio-Cortez has tried to back up her words with actions like initiating impeachment proceedings against conservative Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. If other Democrats in Congress, no matter how senior, are now responding to Trump and Republicans with shrugs after months and years of sounding the alarm, what purpose are they serving in office?

Fearing “Chaos,” Republicans Dread Trump’s RNC Performance

Even Donald Trump’s close allies worry he will go too far off script.

The state at the 2024 RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

As dawn breaks on Lara Trump’s Republican National Convention, not every GOP lawmaker is feeling entirely confident in Donald Trump’s ability not to alienate voters.

Before the assassination attempt against Trump Saturday, Raw Story asked several Republican lawmakers what they were hoping to get from the convention this week. In many ways, their milquetoast answers stood in sharp contrast to the chaotic candidate they’ve come to back.

“Stability. Simple message. Lack of drama,” Representative Don Bacon told Raw Story.

“You know, people want stability. They’re tired of chaos and the loud noises on both sides. So if our side and President Trump can communicate stability and a moderating theme, that’s what we want. Let these other guys blow it.”

“I always try to recommend it, at the least in our area in Omaha, the Midwest—we’re called ‘Nebraska nice’ for a reason,” said Bacon. “I just say in our district, people want governance, conservative governance but decency. And that’s what we want to communicate.”

The Nebraska Republican is staring down what could turn out to be an especially narrow presidential election in his state, which has only five electoral college votes to give, and three of which are distributed based on how the congressional districts vote. As a result, a step toward the middle appears to have been on his mind.

In February, Bacon co-sponsored a nonbinding resolution expressing support for IVF and commending the work of fertility specialists. While the measure itself did absolutely nothing to actually protect the right to fertility treatments, it was an attempt to signal to voters a Republican shift to the middle, or at least an ability to listen to their more centrist constituents.

Apparently, Bacon has been singing his tune about “stability” for a while.

“I remember saying that during his administration, and [Trump’s] chief of staff told me to shut up,” Bacon told Raw Story, clarifying that he was not referring to Mark Meadows.

“The more we can communicate civility and no chaos, the better,” said Bacon. “Americans are tired. We’re tired of all that noise out there.”

Representative Nancy Mace also urged Trump to make an appeal to the middle.

“I think I’ve been pretty vocal about going after independent voters, suburban women, and I’ve tried to be a really strong voice for the party, but he’s doing a remarkable job on his own,” Mace gushed to Raw Story. “He put IVF and birth control and contraception into the Republican Party platform for the first time ever in history.”

Mace was the main sponsor of the do-nothing IVF resolution earlier this year.

And Marco Rubio, a contender for Trump’s vice presidential nomination, ran a hard defense for the former president, claiming he was not at all “dysfunctional,” unlike his opponents. Trump, he said, “comes from a background in real estate and business, and it’s just a different language. And so it may seem alien to people around here, but I watched firsthand how it works, certainly, on the world stage.”

It’s unclear how the weekend’s events will affect Trump’s performance at the RNC, but it’s worth noting that in the past, Trump’s language seemed to be less entrepreneurial and more racist and violent.

Trump said Sunday that his speech, which he is scheduled to deliver Thursday, has been completely rewritten in the wake of Saturday’s shooting, which left one attendee dead and two others injured.

“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” Trump told the Washington Examiner.

Even as Trump turns to unity, one thing is for sure: Drama is definitely still on the schedule.

MAGA Republicans Push Unhinged Conspiracy to Explain Trump’s Shooting

Somehow, the shooting is all the fault of women and racial minorities.

Secret Service agents rush Donald Trump off the stage after he was shot
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Republican lawmakers are ignoring the evidence to blame the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on anyone but themselves.

Although the gunman behind the shooting has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old white conservative, GOP leaders have decided to collectively attack the Secret Service—specifically, the members that are women and people of color.

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Representative Cory Mills was quick to divert attention away from the conservative shooter and toward the nonobvious target: diversity, equity, and inclusion hires.

“Look, I’m not sure about who the individuals are on the individual detail of the Secret Service, but I can tell you under this Biden administration, the one thing I’ve seen is massive DEI hires,” Mills, a former U.S. Army sniper, told Jesse Waters Primetime, appearing to suggest that only white men should be members of the Secret Service. “And I can tell you, when you primarily go after DEI, you end up with D-I-E.”

But Mills wasn’t the only Trump ally frustrated with a service detail that kept the former president alive.

“Somebody really dropped the ball,” Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett told Fox Sunday afternoon. “You’ve got a … DEI initiative-person who heads up our Secret Service. You know, she was working at Pepsi before this. I know she was a former Secret Service agent, but still.”

“This is what happens when you don’t put the best players in. It’s a complete failure on our part,” he said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Burchett baselessly pushed that Democrats’ focus on the violent rhetoric of MAGA Republicans—including likening Trump to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and describing Trump’s political ambitions as fascist—was the reason behind the shooting, despite the fact that Crooks’s former classmates repeatedly described him as holding exclusively conservative ideals.

“It is a manifestation of what they brought upon us,” Burchett said. “It is not the Republicans’ fault.”

And network hosts also jumped in on the fury, including Jeanine Pirro and Laura Ingraham, who were seemingly unhappy with the women who risked their lives and bodies to create a human shield for Trump.

“You and I, in our own way, have been trailblazers in our fields,” Ingraham bemoaned. “And we support women in all we do. But when it comes to shielding the body of someone who is six foot three, and shielding him, you can’t do it if you’re five-five.”

Read more about what Republicans are saying:

Judge Cannon Sets Fire to Trump’s Entire Classified Documents Case

Judge Aileen Cannon determined that Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.

Donald Trump pumps his fist as he walks
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump on Monday, ruling that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to the case was unconstitutional.
In a 93-page decision, Cannon argued that Smith’s appointment had overstepped Congress’s authority, violating the appointments clause of the Constitution.
“The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers,” Cannon wrote, noting that a valid pathway to appoint Smith to the case is and was on the table.
“Congress can authorize his appointment through enactment of positive statutory law consistent with the Appointments Clause,” she wrote.
Cannon’s order dismisses the superseding indictment against the former president, cancels any scheduled hearings, and officially closes the case. Smith can appeal the dismissal, though his office has not yet announced what their next steps will be.
For months, the Trump-appointed judge had been accused of slow-walking the trial in a not-so-subtle effort to postpone it indefinitely. After spending considerable time in hearings dedicated to third-party complaints, Cannon began hearing arguments in June over whether Smith’s appointment to the case was constitutional. But she caught considerable flack from legal experts for taking up the arguments, including from former Trump attorney Ty Cobb, who argued that there were mountains of legal precedent behind Smith’s appointment.
In the ruling, Cannon pointed to the expired Independent Counsel Act as the basis for her decision, claiming that the Department of Justice had appointed Smith under the since-defunct provision.
“No such special counsel statute exists today, and no such statute existed in November 2022 when Attorney General Garland issued the Appointment Order,” Cannon wrote.
Trump faced 42 felony charges in the case related to willful retention of national security information, corruptly concealing documents, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
This story has been updated.