Global Courant
Amr Alfiky/Reuters
In a mind-boggling turn of events, the Federal judge appointed by Donald Trump supervise his Mar-a-Lago secret documents debacle seems to have put the case at warp speed – a court case just two months away.
On Monday morning, federal court documents showed that the U.S. district Judge Aileen M. Cannon created a so-called “rocket roll” to speed up its process through the system.
Cannon has issued an order stating that the most historic criminal trial in U.S. history will begin on August 14. That’s just 55 days away, while most federal trials take a year or more as both sides prepare for an epic showdown in court.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, was unable to confirm that this decision was correct and not simply a typo. Trump’s defense lawyers did not immediately respond to questions.
Legal scholars have noted that this judge is a bit of an unhinged cannon, consistently making puzzling decisions that lean heavily in favor of the president who appointed her in his final months in office.
Previously overseeing another case, Trump’s legal challenge to the initial search of his oceanfront estate Mar-a-Lago in South Florida, she relied on questionable authority to defuse the FBI investigation with bureaucratic red tape. fuses.
The New York Timeslooking at her extremely short history on the bench to date, recently found that she spent just 14 days overseeing four criminal cases – a staggering level of inexperience for someone about to judge such a follow-up process with a long-standing precedent on the country’s democracy.
The second most important person in Trump’s trial was not at his arraignment
Under her order filed Monday morning, federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers must file motions in July and appear at her satellite courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, on August 8.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees a person’s right to a speedy trial, a measure designed to prevent someone from being imprisoned indefinitely through Kafkaesque bureaucracy. In practice, lawyers like to spend several months reviewing documents to poke holes in a case and look for exculpatory evidence that either disproves the prosecution’s theory about the crime or casts reasonable doubt that it ever happened . Meanwhile, prosecutors are using that time to conduct further investigations and find additional witnesses.
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But by starting a trial in two months, Judge Cannon appears to be doing Trump a favour: getting the decisive legal battle early enough that it wouldn’t upset Trump’s 2024 presidential candidate, which is expected to heat up later this year.
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