Judge McAfee in Georgia ruled this week that Defendants Chesebro and Powell will go to trial beginning October 23rd with jury selection. The remaining seventeen will go to trial at a later date, to be determined after motions and appeals are completed. He suggested that a further division of defendants may be required. The Eleventh Circuit has set an expedited schedule for hearing Defendant Meadows' appeal of the denial of his removal motion. It is unlikely if he does not prevail on appeal the other five defendants seeking removal will succeed, but those appeals will take more time. Judge McAfee noted that the Fulton County courthouse does not have a courtroom big enough to accommodate nineteen defendants and their defense teams as desired by Fanni Willis. However, the possibility of creating constitutional defenses for some defendants forced to go to trial early probably weighed more heavily in his decision making.
Meanwhile™ in the Southern District of Florida, MAGA Judge Cannon took her sweet time deciding that Defendant Trump and his lawyers must view classified discovery in a SCIF and not at Mar-a-Lago as requested. It took her an entire month to make this relatively straight forward decision. Her willingness to suffer defendant Trump's continued delaying tactics becomes more apparent as time goes by. Given that one of his employees flipped on him and the level of documentary proof provided by the Special Prosecutor his only hope of evading conviction for obstruction and unlawful retention of national security information is either to delay until he wins the election in November or finding a holdout juror in Ft. Pierce, a MAGA paradise. He continues to erroneously claim on TV that "he had every right to do what he wanted" with the classified documents since "the Presidential Records Act is a civil statute". Of course this ridiculous, deceitful mis-statement of the law and facts is strictly for the consumption of his deluded supporters.
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| credit: R. Bolling |