This is one of the more cowardly headlines I've read in a while:
Emerging Portrait of Judge in Trump Documents Case: Prepared, Prickly and Slow
If you read the actual piece, it contains one (1) example of judge Aileen Cannon being prepared—set against half a dozen where she was confused or mistaken. But the main thing the story makes clear is that practically everything Cannon does is to Donald Trump's benefit. The headline says nothing about this.
A more accurate hed would have been, "Inexperienced, Slow, and Always On Trump's Side." Why run the article at all if you're going to bury it under an innocuous and misleading headline?
Because it's the New York Times, duh.
It isn't just the Times.
See Digby, just a couple of hours ago:
https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/29/deplorable-vs-vermin/
It is so lopsided that I don't see any conclusion other than the media elite in this country actively want and are working to enable the destruction of US democracy. I guess it makes great headlines.
Democrats of every rank need to attack the media elite relentlessly.
They are adjuncts of the Republican campaign.
The last sentence of the Digby article sums it up very well.
"Trump benefits from the fact that he says so many disgusting, reprehensible things that the media no longer sees it as newsworthy. That is perverse."
I ditched the Times in 2016 when they went full "but Hillary's emails".
Incredible. This needs some sort of broadcast.
They want Trump to win.
This is why the NYT is more dangerous than Fox News. Collection of worthless fuckwads.
That story had source development written all over it.
Interesting point about the headline though.
Emerging Portrait Of Trump Critics:
Biased, Uninformed And Angry
They Say Mean Things About Us Too
A Times Analysis
Go sell bullshit somewhere else. We're all stocked up here.
Hot off the presses at Times Pitchbot! Nicely done
+10!
Balance.
Duh.
I thought the exact same thing when I read the article. Cannon is clearly delaying. Seems like a lot of it is her perugative and there’s not much possibility of holding her accountable. Wish this trial could have been first instead of the hush money.
In fact, it would be impossible for the Democrats to hold her accountable or even to remove her from the case. But I think Kevin and basically everyone else here is badly underestimated Cannon's approach to the case. There is an underlying logic which really does make sense from her perspective.
Right now, all that Trump and the Republican Party expects or even wants from her is not to have the trial commence before the November election. And that works for Judge Cannon, too. If Trump's successful in reclaiming the White House, her star will clearly be in the ascendancy; certainly she will advance to the Court of Appeals and perhaps even to the Supreme Court.
And, if Trump is successful in November, the DOJ will dismiss this case against him even though it is incredibly strong—as close to a lay down as I've ever seen. But even if Trump's defeated, Cannon will be in a position to measure his power within the (ruling) Republican Party and to insure his acquittal if he is still the dominant political power in the country.
This is something that's very easy for a judge to engineer by manipulating rulings about evidence or witnesses or insuring a MAGA-presence on the jury and basically routine trial matters. We've seen her do this pre-trial. It is basically impossible to win a conviction if the judge is strongly biased against the prosecution and, in any event, if all else fails, she can still give Trump a directed verdict of acquittal.
As the kids say, "I know, right?" I read that article and thought: in what (legal) world does this article portray Cannon as "prepared?" It portrays her as exasperated with Jack Smith and his prosecution team because they're making it difficult for her to dismiss the charges against Trump and keep pointing out she doesn't know what the fuck she's doing. She occasionally yuks it up with Trump's defense lawyers as she mildly dismisses or redirects their batshit insane stunts to delay the trial. "Ok, ok, I know you guys are trying. Throw me a bone here! Ha, ha!"
That's not "prepared". That's "fucking hack in the bag for Trump".
Which is also a fair description of the NYT’s approach, too.
Be nice.
She's clearly over her head. All this law stuff is new to her and so complicated!
And the Federalist Society aides trying to help her are still finishing their junior theses so they can graduate and assume their own judgeships when Trump is reelected.
Law is hard!
While Kevin would like a headline "Inexperienced, Slow, and Always On Trump's Side.", we shouldn't take this as any criticism of Cannon.
What do you expect a judge to do with a defendant that appointed her to office?
This is how the legal profession works. Judges, full of hubris, think they are all disinterested, unbiased, and experienced. There is no other way to explain the **random** assignment of judges (with limited, or no, opportunity to change). This is not something new. It's been that way for decades. They know the likely consequences, but simply do not care.
I'll broaden that to go beyond judges and bring in lawyers, whose Bar associations are a complete joke. Example: Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanche made an argument using the *well known* logical fallacy, Denying the Antecedent.
if A then B
(if convicted then subject to Indictment) Article 1 § 3 clause 7
therefore
if not-A then not-B
(if Trump was not convicted then he cannot be Indicted)
Why wasn't he banished from the courtroom the next day and under review for disbarment the following week?
To those who say, well, it's an adversarial contest, either side can say *anything* and it's up to the opposition (or jury somehow) to correct falsehoods. You really want that? That's inefficient and wastes time. Are there no indisputable flat-out lies that can be called out in real time?
Re To those who say, well, it's an adversarial contest, either side can say *anything* and it's up to the opposition (or jury somehow) to correct falsehoods.
I have a friend who’s a criminal defense lawyer, mostly defending biker dudes, up for meth dealing and all manner of nasty shit. I asked her how she could use her skills to get some of these guys off, when she knew they were guilty.
She said that consistent use of the adversarial process - where each side makes their strongest argument - is the best way we have of determining truth, even if it’s sometimes wrong. Unless the police know that they’ve got smart people looking over their shoulder, they will always take advantage of defendants.
Nevertheless, it’s absolutely forbidden for lawyers to refer to the consequences of a conviction. I’ve never seen a defense lawyer do that even in a capital case. Blanche knows this rule and chose to break it because he knew that there would not be a consequence for for him beyond being yelled at by the judge.
It was a direct contempt of court and the judge chose to ignore it. In much the same way that he chose to ignore the many out of court threats made against his family, the prosecutor’s families and the jurors and their families. And I think that’s why Trump’s going to be acquitted.
It's especially forbidden to refer to consequences in a capital case. "Don't send this old man to prison" has some chance of engaging at least one juror's sympathy. "Don't kill this man" has much more chance of generating nullification by at least one juror.
I’ve know some true believers but I’ve never seen one outright break this rule. A lot of them have obliquely hinted at “my client is literally fighting for his life” but I’ve never known anyone to outright ask for an acquittal on that basis.
Blanche was swiftly slapped down when he told the jury they shouldn't send Trump to prison.
Being told off by the judge would normally mean a lot to a lawyer but not to a lawyer under these circumstances. And I’m sure that Blanche knew that nothing particularly unpleasant would be coming his way so he chose to say something that every trial lawyer knows is totally unacceptable and forbidden. And that’s the basic story of this trial.
The judge lost control of the defendant and then of the defense lawyers and ultimately of the trial itself.
Because the NYT has gotten further and further to the right over the last 5-10 years. Like the WSJ before it, the rot started on the editorial pages, and stayed there for a while. But when the bias routinely shows up in headlines, it's almost certainly now driven from the publisher or editor-in-chief down deep.
I agree, The New Woke Times was solidly on the right in 2016 but lurched further right in 2020.
Their coverage of trans issue has crossed the line from bad to inexcusable. Red state politicians have actually been citing NYT articles to justify anti-trans legislation. Not just opinion articles, but supposed straight news articles.
During the Bush years the NYT was worth reading, as long as you could ignore the pro-Iraq-War cheerleading. But in the years since then it has gotten more and more rotten, and now one must question whether reading the NYT is worth the effort of sifting through the reams of crap that must be ignored.
"Forget it, Jake, it's New York Times . . . "
Dan Froomkin had a piece earlier this month at Presswatch.org on this and says it's apparently how the publisher wants it-- basically, to avoid taking the "moral high ground" on specific subjects, even at the cost of being completely and unbelievably sanctimonious and self-satisfied (my reading, not Froomkin's). Especially so with the headlines, it seems.
Actually a more interesting case study of the war between content and headline than KD lets on, now that I've gone and read the piece. The reporter obviously can't say outright that she's in the tank for the defense, but he's set up the examples so that's what they show.
Example: she's completely obtuse with one of the prosecutors to the point where the guy is reduced almost to shouting at her out of frustration, and she stomped out of a hearing because the same guy raised a (serious) problem with Nauta's lawyer that he didn't include in the brief. But the Nauta lawyer has raised all kinds of things he hadn't briefed and that was fine by her.
The article points to a favorite tactic of repeating a question repeatedly, but with the prosecutors it's to get their goats and with the defense lawyers it's to get them to end up saying what she wants them to say.
Overall the picture you get is that she's snappish, arbitrary, really hates the prosecutors, and either doesn't know relevant law and procedures or deliberately pretends not to. The only misleading part of the article, imo, is that it gives the impression she's fresh out of law school, when in fact she graduated in 2007 and was a federal prosecutor for 7 of the years since then, mostly in appellate work, which is where she clerked.
Even so, this article leads me to think she fundamentally isn't cut out for trial work at all and probably never has been. And maybe Rubio and her other patrons knew this and parked her in a sleepy out-of-the-way district where she couldn't do any harm in order to get her a few years at that level before bumping her up to a circuit seat.
The article itself has a lot to tell us. It takes some kind of powerful motivation to insert "prepared" in the headline for it, though.
I see it more like, "Incompetent and biased."
She's not always slow. When she's motivated, she'll issue a ruling (or something that stops just short of a ruling and ends up looking like bullshit). There are two things that seem to motivate her: (1) Defensiveness over criticism of her incompetence, and (2) when she believes Trump's lawyers have cited good case law and used acceptable logic, which she then heavily leans on in her ruling/response.
In at least one instance she responded within days to a prosecutor's motion. Reading it, it looked like the hand of two different people -- one where case law is cited and you could follow the logic, and another where it slipped into colloquial (ie casual) grammar and language. I think the first is her staff and the latter is Cannon's writing.
I think her clerks are doing the heavy lifting on the legal side, which of course is what they're hired to do, but I think Cannon leans on them to defend her arcane, asinine ideas.
After being admonished twice by higher courts, she's probably angry at her staff rather than being humbled by those above her. As such, her staff is being forced to go down rabbit holes to find uncommon case law and nuanced reasoning -- and that shit takes time, is why there's so much delay.
It's pretty clear that Cannon's entire goal is to delay and kill the case.
Apparently, there are jokes among Trump circles that Cannon is their favorite campaign staffer.
Lawyers weighing in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1rTtbQJuTI
The attempts to prosecute trump are done after this case in NY. Appeals will drag that out into 2025 or later. If Trump wins, lots of people are going to need to escape the country to avoid prosecution. And make no mistake, those folks will be quickly convicted and sent to prison.
For someone who has provided such a trenchant dissection of Fox News, Kevin seems awfully naive about the New York Times.
I've been meaning to cancel for years, and you finally got me to pull the trigger. It's not really because of this article, but more of a straw that broke the camel's back. Just the fact they're still paying and printing Maureen Dowd is bad enough. And is 20/mo is also a pretty penny for a digital subscription. Anyone have a suggestion of a new paper of record?
Not really in the US. The US edition of the Guardian is pretty good.
Dowd and Brett "If you want to win a war, you've got to kill a lot of women and children" Stephens and Pamela "trans people are icky" Paul and on and on. They have Boule, Krugman, and a few others for "balance" but you have to wonder why they feel objectivity requires publishing utter bullshit in the first place.
Krugman and Klein are the main thing kept me subscribed, till today.
A few weeks ago, the Times covered a speech by Trump in which he admired the fictional character Hannibal Lecter. I thought the press should have a field day criticizing Trump. But no, mostly silence.
And worse. The headline in the Times article was:
Trump, Bashing Migrants, Likens Them to Hannibal Lecter, Movie Cannibal
This was false. He wasn't likening them to Lecter, he was suggesting that we treat them as Lecter treated his victims. He even said about Lecter "great guy". Nowhere in the Times article was there a quote from Trump "likening" the migrants to Lecter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/12/us/donald-trump-hannibal-lecter.html
They are more dangerous to democracy than Fox.
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