Trump DOJ BLOCKED from Judge Cannon's COURT ROOM in EXTRAORDINARY MOVE?!?

Judge Aileen Cannon is back in the news, and not necessarily in a good way. Let's discuss. I'm Dave Ehrenberg, former state attorney for Palm Beach County, aka the Florida lawman here on Legal AF, where we meet at the intersection of law and politics. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't done so already. You remember Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by President Trump in his final days of office in the first term, and then she was assigned to the Mar-a-Lago documents case. And before that, she got involved in the investigation of the

Mar-a-Lago case where she put the kibosh on the whole matter by allowing a special master to get involved to sift through the documents to determine what is privileged and what is not. That's something that is highly unusual, almost never done, and then she was repudiated by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a conservative appellate court, saying, what are you doing? Get off this case. She was

removed from the matter, and then when the case came around after it was filed, she randomly got assigned to the case. It was random. I know the clerk of courts there. She's above board.

Totally.

This was not a fix by anyone. She was randomly assigned the case. And then eventually she disposed of the case. She she did something very unusual. She granted Trump's motion to dismiss because she said that the special counsel, Jack Smith, was appointed improperly in violation of the appointments clause, a decision that would very likely have been overturned on appeal,

but then Trump got elected and the case was dropped. And that's the history of Judge Aileen Cannon. Well, now that Trump is back in office, he has his US attorney for the southern district of Florida,

Aileen can sits within the southern district of Florida,

purposely going there for a reason because they want her to preside over an investigation and future case prosecution against the former CIA chief john brennan. Because that is someone on Trump's enemies list who he wants prosecuted next. And john brennan, though, is not taking the sitting down. He was a former CIA director, he is not just going to sit idly by and let this go

on and go after him and have to incur the cost of getting prosecuted, getting processed, hiring a defense lawyer, and then going to trial possibly no, no, no, he sees what's happening with john Bolton and with Letitia James, and with James Comey. And when it comes to James and Comey, those cases will never go to trial that. And I think the same would be with John Brennan, but why even go down that road? So what he's done a preemptive

strike. He is asking the chief judge of the Southern District of Florida to intervene and to prevent Judge Cannon from being involved in this matter. Really unusual stuff. According to the New York Times, John O. Brennan, the former CA director, sought on Monday to prevent the Justice Department from steering a sprawling investigation into political adversaries of President Trump

to a judge in Florida who issued rulings favorable to Mr. Trump during his classified documents case. The request addressed to Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altanaga of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida was extraordinary indeed. It would be highly unusual for a chief judge to block a colleague from overseeing an investigation. But a lawyer for Mr. Brennan argued that under

the circumstances she had the authority and a duty to do so. In a 16-page letter, the lawyer Kenneth J. Weinstein asserted that the Justice Department, in what he portrayed as a violation of prosecutorial ethics, appeared to be planning to manipulate grand jury and case assignment procedures to put the investigation into Mr. Trump's perceived foes under Judge Aileen M. Cannon. Citing a pattern of the judge's rulings in the documents case as indicating bias, Mr.

Weinstein wrote, We urge your Honor to exercise your supervisory authority as chief judge to ensure the United States attorney does not steer this matter to the Fort Pierce division into the courtroom of Judge Aileen Cannon. Judge Altanaga and Judge Cannon declined to comment

through the district's clerk of the court. That's my friend over there. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. Okay, so aside from the fact that any attempt to go after john Brennan would be politically motivated. There's a statute of limitations

issue, by the way, on top of all of that, if you wonder how they're even going to get around a statute of limitations issue, because what what this is about is a January 2017 intelligence assessment that concluded that Russia, of course, was trying to help Trump win the 2016 election. So the person who oversaw that assessment was john Brennan. So they're going after

him for that. But how do you have 2017? That's beyond this five year statute of limitations. That is beyond any statute of limitations here. So you can't do it. But what they're saying is that the the search of Mar-a-Lago member the Mar-a-Lago documents case, they're saying that is continuous, a continuous violation, a continuous crime where you have the 2017 violation of the so called

Russia hoax. And then it was continued by what he says an improper search of Mar-a-Lago. Of course, keep mind that that search of Mar-a-Lago was signed off by a federal magistrate. So it was done legally, they had to have probable cause that a crime occurred, and there'll be evidence of a crime at that property. They did. So this case

is going nowhere. But Brennan doesn't want to have to start defending it, it costs a lot of money. And who wants to get fingerprinted and have to deal with all that stuff. So he is, he's just not leaving it to chance. Plus, you get in front of the wrong judge, a judge who's favorable to Trump, and all of a sudden, the cases that get thrown out like the case against Letitia James, and the case against James Comey doesn't get thrown out. We're talking about a judge was a lot of power when it comes to

a kind of evidence is admitted. What is the makeup of the jury that is selected? And yes, whether the case even survives to get to a jury. I think this case would be so weak that that Brennan could appeal some of the rulings by by Judge Cannon. And this whole thing would be just a mess for years until

Trump's out of office, then it'd be gone. But why wait that long? So Brennan, as I said, preemptive strike is going there, and he is going before the chief judge to say, you got to intervene here. Now, although the New York Times article does say that it would be extraordinary for the chief judge to come on in and step in when the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida is doing the subpoenas and going to convene a grand jury in Fort

Pierce because he wants Judge Cannon to be overseeing it. That would be extraordinary for the chief judge to say, yeah, you're not going to be involved in that. But it really isn't extraordinary. Because if you remember, before she took the actual case, the actual Mar-a-Lago documents case, the chief judge reached out to her. The New York Times remembers

when Judge Cannon was randomly assigned to oversee the indicted case. Two of her colleagues, including chief judge Altanaga, urged her to decline and let it be reassigned to another judge. But Judge Cannon insisted on keeping it,

according to two people briefed on the conversations. So they're going to the right person who has already tried to intervene, and they're not telling her to call off the investigation. They're not telling her just to let John Brennan go. They're saying, just don't let it be under Judge Cannon.

They're not asking for anything more than, in their mind, to protect John Brennan's rights. They're saying, in particular, that there would be no reason for Judge Altanaga to intervene if Mr. Redding-Quinonez, he's the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, publicly promised that the Brennan matter would never be moved to Fort Pierce. That means never go before Judge Cannon. But absent such a statement, he said,

the circumstances clearly indicated that Mr. Redding Quinones was attempting to steer this matter toward Judge Cannon. Not sure which way the chief judge will go, but I think this has a real shot. It's extraordinary. But I do think that the chief judge does not want to see her district, Southern District of Florida, be used for political purposes,

like the Eastern District of Virginia was, and you saw the embarrassment up there, that if you allow this to continue, that you could end up with a morass where it goes before the 11th Circuit, then up to the Supreme Court, then back, and then it's going to take hundreds of hours and people spinning their wheels. And in the end, Brennan's never going to jail

because he did nothing wrong. You know, I'm a believer of guardrails in our system. Prosecutors have a lot of power, but the power is not unlimited. Just ask Lindsey Halligan, the former acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Well, keep following us here on Legal AF. I'm Dave Aronberg, aka the Florida Lawman. If you liked this video, like, subscribe, share with a friend, leave a comment below. Also, check out my sub stack at Dave Airenberg for daily videos. I'll see you there and I'll see you here next time.

Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack, you'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF, what else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well.

We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal AF on Substack. we got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes where legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.