Every lawyer who discussed this novel case of the target of a legal search warrant bringing a civil suit against the United States of America, to get as much delay as possible in the US criminal investigation into his theft of classified documents, knew Judge Aileen Cannon had no jurisdiction to hear the case. In Trump v. US she claimed equitable (fairness) jurisdiction which is only available when there is no adequate remedy at law and the result would be grossly unfair without a court stepping in. In this case, of course, Trump had an adequate remedy at law — to contest the legality of the search warrant. A case he never brought because there was no chance of success. The search warrant was not only legal, it turned up the evidence described in the warrant, found in the specific places described in the warrant.
So Trump did an end-run to prevent the evidence being used against him by the Department of Justice. Ran his shabby Hail Mary lawsuit 70 miles up the coast to a courthouse where the supremely loyal Cannon was the only federal judge there. He managed to buy about four months of delay. Now his incoherent lawsuit against the US government has been dismissed and the government can review the thousands of papers seized pursuant to the legal search warrant. He’ll probably go to the Supreme Court, because, why the fuck not? They will make a 9-0 one sentence ruling upholding the Eleventh circuit’s decision overruling Cannon’s absurd, although highly loyal, order. The Eleventh circuit appeals panel (two Trump appointees and a Dubya Bush appointee) sent the case back to Cannon to dismiss it herself for lack of jurisdiction, which is the most humiliating way they could have ended the case.
It was a major smackdown. If they’d upheld Cannon’s order they’d be giving permission to every subject of a search warrant to sue the government in civil court to prevent the review of criminal evidence legally seized by the government.
“The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
Next move — make a grim example of brand new, lawless federal MAGA judge Aileen Mercedes Canon by bringing her in front of a judicial ethics panel and disciplining her publicly. Or better still, remove her from the federal bench.
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