US District Judge Aileen Cannon has canceled tentative plans to hold a hearing on August 25 on a protective order for classified evidence in the Mar-a-Lago documents case against former President Donald Trump.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon has canceled tentative plans to hold a hearing on August 25 on a protective order for classified evidence in the Mar-a-Lago documents case against former President Donald Trump.
This digs into it.
Ken White is a first amendment lawyer, and has been covering the Trump indictments (and general crimes) for a while now.
There are a few other lawyers I follow on Mastodon who have also chimed in on it. The general consensus is that Fani Willis wants a bit of a show trial. Which weakens the case, If she had been a bit more careful with it, she would have a slam dunk, but would not have the mandatory minimum sentencing of the Georgia RICO.
Ugh, a podcast? I know it’s not your fault about the format but that’s not super useful. Thanks though.
Same lawyer has a substack where it seems like he’s talking about all the same stuff here, tl;dr
It makes him uneasy as a first amendment defense attorney but it seems like he still thinks it will work
Want youtube?
This one isn’t quite as good at digging into the issues of the indictment, but does talk about how it’s weaker than Jack Smith’s DC indictment.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=7mk4nfGX-pM
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They only need to prove two (2) instances for the criminal enterprise to be established under the Georgia Rico laws, and the tampering and harrassement of Ruby Freeman as well as the Coffee County extraction of voter information would easily set the stage for the other 140 acts described, I dont see the ‘show’ here, sounds like an easily winnable case in the state of Georgia, as for the removal to the federal system, they would need to prove that the criminal conspiracy acts, overt and predicated were part of the official duties, which in the current state of the judiciary is a flip, but should not have any bearings on convictions anyway.
Parts of the indictment are easily winnable, parts are not winnable at all.
And parts might get removed to federal jurisdiction.
That’s what makes it a show trial. Fani Willis has laid out a very nice political case against Trump, but has added shit that will make the legal case harder to prosecute. Namely, parts of the indictment that seem to be clearly First Amendment violations.
This means that under Georgia law, Trump’s lawyers can file a motion to dismiss, and can do so now, or next week, or the night before the trial starts. Georgia law gives a DA two tries to get an indictment right, if it’s dismissed due to problems a second time, Trump gets away with it (in Georgia, the DC case is still going to nail his ass to the wall)
Jack Smith didn’t make that sort of mistake in either the Documents case or the DC indictment.
Nah, the First Amendment doesnt cover criminal acts nor is total as the trumpet found out on the Chutkin case, as for the whole case as argued, you can throw out some of the 140 listed acts, but as provided on the Georgia special vaguely RICO laws you can link those seemingly innocent ‘First Amendment’ ‘perfect’ tweets with the whole scheme which is pretty clear, steal the presidency -‘wE wOn’ speech et all- and we all saw it happen, now, the indictment its just a detailed timeline with specific set of acts, that when looked as a whole can be linked to the criminal enterprise -you can buy a printer, but not use it for blackmail-, be it govt officials or civilians or any group of people acting in concert, and as such under the Georgia law, the solicitation for votes, the speeches, the false statements, the tweets are overt acts aiding the conspiracy.
Seems to me, after reading the indictment, theres more than enough to satisfy the Georgia RICO Laws and that the first amendment as well as the change of venue should fall on its face but the judge is a novice and the trumpet will try it all.
As for the motion to dismiss they -trumpet lawyers- file those daily, on the most banal and frivolous grounds and they must be very well paid cause they lose them all, so l wanna see how the judge weathers the first motions from Meadows, you really cant tell anymore, just look at the Cannon debacle down in Fla, so its a flip.
The consensus from people that have argued RICO cases and won seems to be its pretty well built and there seems to be people cooperating with the Ga prosecutors, based on the accts mentioning unindicted co-conspirators declaring shit to the grand jury.
And as a final note the same Willis on the press conf that night said that some acts were added cause the grand jury considered them to be part of the conspiracy so I would not agree on the “Fani Willis” wants attention hot take, whereas the trumpet is the one sociopath crying and whining on social media and well known thinned skinned coward.
Edit. formating
There are clear first amendment actions being listed as criminal in the Georgia case, every single lawyer who has read it and publicly commented has said so.
This podcast episode has actual lawyers, including a Georgia lawyer familiar with Georgia RICO law, talking about it.
If you don’t want to listen to 20 minutes, there’s this breakdown.
Jack Smith was careful with making sure that all the overt acts he picked were meant to stay away from protected first amendment speech. Fani Willis was not as careful. This lead to a quirk of Georgia law, the General Demurrer. This motion challenges the indictment to be more clear about what is and is not a crime. Basically the defendant says “I did these things, but they aren’t a crime” and some of the items used in the Georgia indictment are not crimes, ever. Some other things are very much criminal. It’s a mess.
The fact of the matter is that State DAs are often sloppy and arrogant when filing charges. Fani Willis uses RICO to drag out cases, strong arming defendants and their lawyers into accepting the convictions, because she’s more interested in show trials and headlines than doing the job correctly.
Contrast Jack Smith, who is a Federal prosecutor and held to a much higher standard, and you can see how weak the Georgia case is. The really sad part is, there’s enough in the Georgia case that it could be a very strong case, but the way it’s written, it just isn’t.