The man who has spent his adult life grifting from others, a sociopathic liar of consummate ability who exploited fawning sycophants more than willing to enable him had his worst week ever at the hands of a very reluctant justice system. He was hit with a civil fraud suit against him, his progeny, and his company by the Attorney General of New York, who said in reality the Trump book, "The Art of the Deal" is the actually art of the steal. He inflated his assets to fraudulently obtain needed loans and evade taxes, and he did this for decades. The DOJ issued forty subpoenas to loyalists demanding documentary evidence and seized the cell phone of two former White House officials. And in Florida, the sycophant federal judge, Aileen Cannon was pummeled with surprising alacrity by the Eleven Circuit Court of Appeals.
The three judge panel that consisted of two Trump appointed judges, issued a scathing rebuke of Judge Cannon on Wednesday for her obvious attempt to give her leader more relief than he was entitled. The panel concluded she abused her discretion by appointing a special master to examine government secrets to which he has no possessory interest or "need to know" their contents, which is the golden standard in the classification system. The helpfully gave Judge Cannon a nutshell lesson in classification law starting with WWI. All that aside, the appeal judges clearly pointed out that the issue of classification or declassification is a "red herring" since that status is irrelevant to the potential criminal charges being investigate nor change the contents of the documents that contain national security secrets. The panel directed that the DOJ need not allow the Special Master to see the highly classified documents to protect them from disclosure, His review is now restricted to the larger tranche of non-classified documents, which the Department has already filtered for evidentiary privilege. For his part the Judge Dearie has asked Trump's lawyers to tell him which documents are allegedly planted by the FBI. The jig is clearly up in Brooklyn.
In granting the government's request for a stay of Cannon's biased decision, the judges also ruled that DOJ can use the lawfully seized documents in their criminal probe, and in assessing the damage done to the nation's security because the papers belong to the American people and not the would be dictator, Donald J. Trumpillini. Declassifimundus is only in your mind, Donald.
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| credit: de Adder, Washington Post |