On the matter of Federal District Court Judge Cannon’s handling of the Mar-a-Lago case, the ruling of the US Court Of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit came down as hoped for by lawyers liberal and conservative – and in a hurry:
The ruling Wednesday evening by a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to slap a partial stay on a lower court’s ruling that froze the Justice Department’s Mar-a-Lago investigation should surprise nobody.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon was a hot mess, as we and others detailed when she handed it down, and the grounds for an almost-inevitable appellate court intervention were obvious at the time. That said, the 29-page opinion is important in a number of respects.
For one thing, its unanimity and speed emphasize the fact that Judge Cannon’s interference in the Justice Department’s investigation was a gross impropriety, not a plausible legal position. That two of the panel members were, like Judge Cannon, appointed by President Trump further emphasizes that this is a matter of professionalism, not a matter of ideology or the sort of judicial philosophy that reasonably separates conservative from liberal jurists.
So too does the fact that the court ruled within 24 hours of the government’s final brief—and wrote in a per curiam opinion, that is, in the voice of the court itself, not of its individual judges. In short, giving the government relief from Judge Cannon’s injunction was a very easy call—one that required neither time nor any significant deliberation. Rather, the rate-limiting step in issuing this opinion was the speed with which judges of diverse political stripes could type. [Quinta Jurecic, Lawfare]
This is the kind of treatment that results in judges not making their way up the ladder, and Cannon will be looking at many years of sitting behind the relatively lowly, dusty desk of a US District Judge for years to come, especially if Chief Executives unsympathetic to her actions are elected to the Presidency. Or if Democrats capture the Senate, as I expect, for several cycles, because they’ll remember this partisan decision.
I will look for her to resign if Joe Biden, or an allied Democrat, wins the Presidency in 2024.
