Trumps woman doing her best to get the SCOTUS position when her leader is re-elected.
Sorry - long post coming but for those who are interested in some of the finer points, I've been procrastinating writing an essay to look into this instead. Important note, I am not a lawyer so take my reading of it with a pinch of salt, I just read a lot of legal news, but even I can see the craziness in this because there are parts which just outright contradict written black and white law. It is
that bad.
It's really hard to understate how fucking nuts this order from her is. There are just so many problems with it that it's hard to know where to start. According to those in the know, this might be the strangest thing to ever come out of a federal judge, it seems to belie the fact that she's not just shilling for Trump but she actually doesn't understand what the fuck she's doing at the most fundamental level. Just a few highlights:
1) She is asking for Smith to submit jury instructions that allow the jury to decide on matters of law. This is like Court 101, juries decide on matters of fact. You can't delegate the task of correctly classifying documents to a jury ffs. She is trying to frame this as an argument over a mater of fact... it is just not.
2) The second part of this order contradicts the first part, it's internally inconsistent. She's saying the classification of documents is not a matter of what the documents contain but under the whim of the executive (suggesting she is considering the argument Trump can declassify things with his mind - batshit). If that's the case then... why does 1 exist?
3) The appeals court has already unequivocally come down on argument (2) and stated that Trump has "no personal or possessory interest" in the documents - in other words, they are not personal documents, no matter what Trump says.
4) Whether a document is a personal document is decided very clearly in the PRA, it's like she hasn't even read it. She omits an entire section of classification in this ruling, "Agency Records" which many of these are as they were created by Agencies with no input from Trump or the Office of President. The PRA is quite clear that this type of document cannot be construed as a personal document - it also misunderstands that the PRA does not supersede existing law under the Espionage Act.
5) She's once again suggesting a jury with no clearance should have full and unredacted access to sensitive national security documentation.
The question is, what do they do now? I don't know... they could decide this is the point at which they ask for extraordinary relief (removal). I don't think they'll do that. I think in likeliness, Smith will basically just ignore this order completely - citing the appellate court's previous ruling, call her bluff - and challenge her to dismiss him for contempt. If she takes that bait then the chances of success for her getting removed will rocket because it's either her or Smith and only one of the two clearly has the law on their side.
In all likelihood she backs down and the circus continues...
