A bit of legal news: Things aren't always necessarily what they look like

Judge ‘Loose’ Cannon reluctantly dismisses 

her own partisan pro-Trump decision

The 11th Circuit federal appeals court rejected Aileen Cannon’s brazenly partisan decision to appoint a special master to review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago. Her decision was widely seen as partisan and unjustified. The DoJ appealed and the appeals court said that Cannon’s court did not have jurisdiction to even hear Trump’s unfounded demand for a special master to review the Mar-a-Lago documents. Trump’s filing effectively slowed progress in the case by months.

The deadline for Trump to appeal to the appeals court decision to Supreme Court expired last Thursday. Trump did not appeal.

One could see this as a loss for Trump, but winning an obviously unwinnable motion probably was not what Trump intended. Instead, he arguably won by getting a delay in the DoJ investigation from the pro-Trump judge his legal team intentionally put the case in front of.

If Trump had not filed his demand for a special master to review documents and Cannon hadn’t gone along with it, the criminal case would have advanced farther between August and the November midterms. That was at a time when things looked a lot different. Trump took no political hit from the radical right until the last few weeks, not last August.

In August Trump appeared to be a lot more politically formidable. Everyone expected a devastating red wave to blow the Democrats out of control of congress. Trump arguably reinforced his image of untouchability by stiff-arming both the rule of law and common sense with his legally hopeless motion.[1] Confidence did not start to drop off until early voting polls came in within days of the November midterms. The unknowable thing is what if his supporters started writing him off and fracturing a month or two earlier. We cannot know if it would have made any difference in the House and Senate elections and majorities. It could have. 

In other words, if Trump had not filed this motion in August, it is possible (not certain) that the Republicans would not have taken control of the House and maybe even lost one or two seats in the Senate. 

All in all, one can think that Trump’s delay tactic more likely than not succeeded if one assumes it was filed to delay the DoJ’s investigation for political advantage, not to win on the legal merits. Maybe the whole point was to win by delaying, denying and obstructing, not to win on the merits.

Footnote: 

1. For example, I was unsure whether the radical right 11th Circuit appeals court would pass on the legal flaws in Cannon’s order for a special master. It was only after reading some of the appeals court decision to slap Cannon down hard, did the weakness of Trump’s motion become plausible. That is when I started to believe that Trump’s tactic was likely legally hopeless. That belief was cemented into certainty when Trump chose not to appeal to the Supreme Court.

This exemplifies a big problem with fomenting irrational, unfounded distrust in government, elections, political opposition, etc. Distrust can spread to and poison public confidence in the courts. That was where I was and still am. Even with this appeals court decision, I do not trust that radical right circuit will adhere to the rule of law when the stakes are much higher for the radical right than was the case here.