Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Joe Biden's Presidential Job Approval Ratings
% Approve Polling dates
44% Aug 1-23, 2022

Other elected presidents in August of second year
Donald Trump 41 Aug 2018
Barack Obama 44 Aug 2010
George W. Bush 67 Aug 2002
Bill Clinton 41 Aug 1994
George H.W. Bush 75 Aug 1990
Ronald Reagan 41 Aug 1982
Jimmy Carter 41 Aug 1978

A federal judge's decision to appoint a special master to examine thousands of documents seized by the FBI from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home has been criticized by legal experts.

Judge Aileen Cannon granted the former president's request on Monday for a special master to be brought in to determine if any of the materials are protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, also temporarily halted the Department of Justice (DOJ) from using any of the materials seized from Trump's Florida home as part of the criminal investigation into allegations the former president mishandled classified and top-secret documents, until the special-master review is complete.

Cannon ruled that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence may continue its probe into the possible risk to national security posed by the removal of potentially highly sensitive government and intelligence secrets.

Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard University, tweeted that Cannon's decision was "utterly lawless" and that she has "disgraced her position as an Article III judge."

Tribe's post was in response to a tweet from Andrew Weissmann, a former DOJ prosecutor. It read that Cannon's decision now puts the DOJ in an "untenable position" of appealing a "plainly wrong decision and enduring the unknown delay that entails OR just trying to speed though the Spec Master process."

A number of other legal experts have condemned Cannon for intervening in the criminal investigation while citing disputed reasoning of executive privilege.

Executive privilege, which shields records involving presidents from being made public, can be invoked by a former president only if the incumbent allows it, a move that has not been granted in this case by Joe Biden.

In a letter to Trump's legal team on May 10, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) noted that there is "no precedent" for an assertion of executive privilege by a former president against an incumbent to prevent the latter from obtaining presidential records belonging to the federal government, which in itself is part of the executive branch.

Peter M. Shane, a legal scholar and specialist in separation of powers, told The New York Times: "Even if there is some hypothetical situation in which a former president could shield his or her communications from the current executive branch, they would not be able to do so in the context of a criminal investigation—and certainly not after the material has been seized pursuant to a lawful search warrant."

Cannon's reasoning that Trump should be treated like an ordinary citizen as part of the investigation now he is no longer president was also disputed. In her 24-page ruling, Cannon explained that she came to her decision to appoint a special master "to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances."

Samuel W. Buell, a Duke University law professor, said that Cannon's decision to allow special considerations to the former president was "laughably bad" and the written justification "even flimsier."

"Donald Trump is getting something no one else ever gets in federal court, he's getting it for no good reason, and it will not in the slightest reduce the ongoing howls that he is being persecuted, when he is being privileged," Buell told The New York Times.

In a series of tweets, former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal also hit out at Cannon's decision to bring in a special master to prevent "reputational" harm to the former president.

"That's insane-every crim[inal] def[endan]t has reputational harm. Are we now going to have special masters in every crim investigation?" Katyal wrote.

Who Is Aileen Cannon?

Cannon is a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She was nominated by Trump in May 2020, with the Senate confirming her in a 56-21 vote on November 12 of that year, nine days after Trump lost the presidential election.

Prior to her appointment, Cannon worked as an assistant United States attorney, serving in the appellate section's criminal division in Florida from 2013 to 2020, as well as as an associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher from 2009 to 2012.

Cannon has been a member of the Federalist Society, a hugely influential nationwide organization of conservative lawyers, since 2005.

The Federalist Society is credited with helping Trump with his picks for Supreme Court nominees as president, with 43 out of 51 of Trump's federal court appointments either members or having ties to the organization.

Currently, five of the nine Supreme Court judges, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett, are former members of The Federalist Society, with John Roberts' official membership disputed.

In 2018, Politico also credited the Federalist Society with "changing American society itself by deliberately, diligently shifting the country's judiciary to the right."

US senator rejects Israeli army report on killing of Palestinian American reporter

A US senator has dismissed an Israeli army report that claims a soldier accidentally killed the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in the midst of a gun battle, saying it is unsupported by the evidence.

Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator for Maryland, repeated his call for an independent US investigation into Abu Aqleh’s killing in the West Bank in May, saying that the United Nations and reconstructions by major news outlets found that the Al Jazeera television journalist was not in the immediate vicinity of fighting with Palestinian militants and could not have been caught in the crossfire.

I think Barr generally thought Trump was an idiot, but he was in favor of the Trump agenda. 1/6 was too much for him though. From the hearings, we've seen there were three types of people in the Trump administration with each faction about equal size, those actively working in the insurrection, those actively opposed and those keeping their heads down. Barr was in the actively opposed group.

The DOJ can get Trump's hand-picked judge removed from the case — here's how

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe joined Lawrence O'Donnell on Wednesday night, and after hearing him address some of the legal matters facing Donald Trump, another law scholar was aghast anyone has to take the matters as if they're serious. But former acting-solicitor general, Neal Katyal, came up with a strategy for how the Justice Department can circumvent the Trump-appointed judge the ex-president shopped to get from the beginning.

Andrew Weissmann, who served as general counsel for the FBI and a prosecutor on special counsel Robert Mueller's team, began the discussion by saying that the Justice Department appeal the injunction but not necessarily the special master. The documents that fall under executive privilege are going to be very easy to suss out from those involving personal attorney-client privilege. At the same time, nothing that is in a classified or "top secret" folder is going to fall under privileged information for Donald Trump.

"This is like a thief taking documents then saying, 'Judge, I want them back,'" Weissmann said. "This is a complete farce. And to have somebody like Laurence Tribe and Neal Katyal have to address this, as if it's a serious argument, just tells you the depths that we are in. And just to be very serious for a moment the notion that in the documents there are state secrets involving nuclear capabilities — it means that there is present harm to national security. Our allies and countries that want to quietly cooperate with us are looking at all of this and making decisions about whether they should continue to do so if we cannot keep secrets. That is how we protect this country. It is how we thwart terrorist attacks. It is how we conduct important, lifesaving undercover operations."

hat's why it's so important to get the information back, he explained, and the national security piece of the story is likely a factor in how Merrick Garland will act moving forward. He will do what is in the best interest of national security and get to a decision in reversing that piece of Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling quickly.

Katyal conceded that appeals take a very long time to deal with. Trump will also likely appeal to the Supreme Court and that will take even more time. It isn't clear, however, if due to this involving national security, and now we learn it involves nuclear secrets, if the courts would be willing to move faster. Given there are questions about whether Trump still has documents, based on the empty folders found, there could be even more search warrants issued.

His second point is that the more information that comes out the worse Judge Cannon looks, and it's only going to get worse.

"Every day, every week, we learn a new fact about just how bad Trump's behavior was. Now, it is nuclear secrets. That also underscores just how bad the decision was by this judge in Florida. So, appointing a special master is one thing, but stopping a criminal investigation of this magnitude in its tracks because you think, as a federal judge, that some documents might be privileged. That is insane. That is a bazooka when one needs, at most, a scalpel. And if you have lost Bill Barr, and Bill Barr is -- God. That is...." Katyal said, trailing off.

The other option, he suggested, is seeking clarification from the judge. Already it has been argued that the judge will likely have to issue an edit to her opinion because she misquoted a case.

"She said the current president, President Biden has not waived executive privilege," she obviously didn't read the last part of the government's brief saying that he'd said so. But the government, the solicitor general, can have a document from Biden saying, 'I hereby wave executive privilege.' They could then ask her to narrow the scope of the injunction, so that the investigation can proceed. The downside: this judge doesn't seem all that amenable to reconsideration or logic," Katyal continued.

The last option, he said, is one he suggests the Justice Department go with, and that is Judge Cannon basically argued that she shouldn't be overseeing the case to begin with.

"She pleaded herself out of her own court," said Katyal. "Because she planted remedies to the special master via the Presidential Records Act. And she has a footnote on this, Footnote 16, which says basically, the Presidential Records Act says that you can only bring these cases in Washington D.C. and only Washington D.C. judges can oversee them. So, that maybe that's what the Justice Department, I think, should do here. Get this case before judges who are experts on presidential records and executive privilege and the like."

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"She pleaded herself out of her own court," said Katyal. "Because she planted remedies to the special master via the Presidential Records Act. And she has a footnote on this, Footnote 16, which says basically, the Presidential Records Act says that you can only bring these cases in Washington D.C. and only Washington D.C. judges can oversee them. So, that maybe that's what the Justice Department, I think, should do here. Get this case before judges who are experts on presidential records and executive privilege and the like."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-documents-circumvent-handpicked-judge/

USA TODAY - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/08/doj-appeal-trump-special-master/7999425001/

DOJ to appeal Trump special master appointment in Mar-a-Lago document case

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department will challenge the appointment of a special master to review thousands of documents seized during last month's search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago beach club, a ruling that has effectively limited the criminal investigation into the Trump team's handling of classified government records.

The notice of appeal comes after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon authorized the appointment of a third party to identify records that may relate to privileged attorney-client communications that should be shielded from federal investigators.

In court documents filed Thursday, the government also asked that Cannon suspend at least part of ruling barring the use of the classified documents seized during the Aug. 8 search in the continuing investigation, pending the appeal.

Justice officials argued that the "government and the public would suffer irreparable harm absent a stay."

The new court filing states that Trump cannot assert any claim to the classified documents and that any assertions that they might be privileged communications between attorney and client did not apply.
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Next stop is the 11th Circuit, where Trump nominees dominate

Trump’s judicial appointees have not always ruled in his favor

As former President Donald Trump’s legal entanglements wind their way through the federal courts, he continues to face strong odds of landing before a judge he appointed.

More than half of the active judges on the federal appeals court poised to hear the latest phase of Trump’s fight with the Justice Department over the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home got their posts through Trump’s aggressive remaking of the US judiciary.