By ordering Raymon Dearie to prioritize documents marked as classified in his Special Master review, Judge Aileen Cannon hastened the moment where we’ll have a series of contentious fights about the Separation of Powers.
The education of John Durham as he has struggled to provide discovery to first Michael Sussmann and now Igor Danchenko has been painful and damaging for those charged. But along the way he’s debunking many of the conspiracy theories he was hired to sustain.
Even after Evan Corcoran’s legal advice about Executive Privilege led Steve Bannon to be found guilty for contempt, he continued to try to push others, including Eric Herschmann, to follow the same advice.
In its motion for a stay before the 11th Circuit, the government hinted that the investigation into Trump’s document theft has expanded to consider whether and to whom he leaked these documents.
In a footnote of their motion for a stay, DOJ analogized Trump to Nghia Pho, who by bringing files home from work is believed to have contributed to two global malware attacks.
The trial for a different embittered former government employee who allegedly brought classified documents to his home in Florida, Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown, is due to start in October. It provides a glimpse at the kinds of issues that come up in Espionage Act prosecutions.
A number of details about Judge Aileen Cannon’s plans for a Special Master provide ways to pre-empt decisions a jury in a Trump trial would make.
Judge Cannon makes no mention of the specific crimes under investigation in her order denying a stay of her Special Master order. That’s telling, because the documents marked as classified at issue are either evidence of a violation of the Espionage Act or evidence of obstruction.
Aileen Cannon is now dictating that the government clear Trump’s counsel.
The letters — two of them! — Evan Corcoran wrote on May 25, the day after the original subpoena deadline for all remaining documents with classification marks in Donald Trump’s possession, seemed focused on staving off the search that ultimately happened.
