Judge Cannon SCREWS HERSELF and DOJ is READY

it's Michael popac and it's very dark it must be time for legal a after dark Merck Garland special counsel Jack Smith are finally firing back at judge aen Cannon as they prepare their 11th circuit brief to try to reverse her decision to dismiss the indictment of the Donald Trump case Merck Garland is taken to the airwaves to defend his decision and to tell the world that he knows the law and alien Cannon doesn't break it all down for you one place and one place only legal AF take a listen meric Garland because he's he's taken a lot of flak he's not weird but he's taken a lot of flak and um he went on a recent um interview in which the it was like a wide ranging interview they talked about the Secret Service which is sort of underneath doj and and different other Homeland Security and things and they got to the point about aen Cannon the judge in southern district of Florida who decided to dismiss the entirety of the indictment because she found that Jack Smith is a figment of our imagination that he's he's not he's just the he's just a guy he's just a stranger he's just Jack Smith he's not a special prosecutor or counsel at all he has no powers and he's not funded properly and the indictment should go by the wayside let's hear from Merrick Garland who's finally spoken up and spoken out about whether Jack Smith is employed by the Department of Justice and whether he takes his ultimate marching orders from somebody named the Attorney General judge Eileen Cannon ruled that the way the justice department has been picking special councils for decades is illegal unconstitutional why do you disagree with that look I uh as you all know I picked this uh room for this interview this is my favorite room in the Justice Department it's a law library for more than 20 years I was a federal judge do I look like somebody who would make that basic mistake about the law um I I don't think so um uh our position is that it's constitutional and valid that's why we appealed I will say that this is the same process of appointing special counsel um as was followed in the previous administration and the special councel Durham and Special M Council Mueller in multiple uh special councils over the decades going back to Watergate um and the special prosecutor in that case till now every single Court including the Supreme Court that has considered the legality of a special counsel appointment has upheld it right so that's a very good point that that that General Garland made there John Durham who was a special counsel uh who was part of the the the Russia investigation but was under bar he was made a special counsel by Bill bar ultimately by Donald Trump and nobody suggested that Donald Trump didn't have the power through as as attorney general to to create John Durham that John Durham spent millions of dollars to do nothing and invest you know he brought one prose he brought three prosecutions they all failed nobody got convicted and it was a ridiculous charade but nobody challenged that and what and for our audience what the what attorney general Garland is talking about and I'll turn it over to you Dena about it what he's talking about is back as far back is 1974 in a line of cases involving Richard Nixon you know the then uh the then um attorney general acting attorney general because attorney general's went to jail under Nick okay uh he was our first criminal president who was caught um and and a lot of people went to jail around him including some that are now Talking Heads and have been on our Network and have given interviews but you know at the time they were criminals and they went to jail but the um uh Robert Bourke people might remember was this close to becoming a Supreme Court Justice but didn't make it he was then the acting attorney general and and before the Watergate commission which was a bipartisan boy remember those days by partisan Congressional commission investigating what the heck happened with Watergate and who what heads should roll he made a promise that he would appoint a special prosecutor that special prosecutor became Leon jorski if you go back in Wiki and history you'll see Leon jorski was the prosecutor for most of Watergate that was based on a promise that was made from the acting attorney general to Congress they were like okay that's fine and they so that's the start of it and and his powers were validated by the United States Supreme Court who enforced his aena power as a special prosecutor then we had an independent counsel for a period of time under a congressional statute and then that that spawn things like the kenstar uh Whitewater investigation and and uh what became Monica lowinsky and and her allegations against Clinton everybody hated it on both sides of the aisle they got rid of that in independent Council role and instead it was replaced by the Department of Justice exercising its rights under the Constitution under the Attorney General to appoint a inferior off officers that report to the attorney general including what's called special attorneys that are listed in the Constitution and that's exactly what uh Merrick Garland did and every court that has looked at it every court but aen Canon every federal court citing back to us versus Nix and the Supreme Court president has upheld the validity of the of a uh of a a special counsel special prosecutor whatever you want to call it not alien Canon new to the bench appointed by Trump in 2020 no no 93 Pages she decided this has been done wrong all this time because she heeded the call of Clarence Thomas right who wrote his concurring opinion in the in the case about in the immunity in the um in the immunity case and said hey aen this is my paraphrase my artist rendering hey why don't you why don't you argue that the special counsil is invalid and then you get rid of the whole indictment right on Q three weeks later she did exactly that talk to me about how you're seeing Merrick Garland and why do you think while the appeal is now pending before the 11 circuit why is mer Garland taking to the airwaves in order to basically uh give his position oh I loved that hearing Merck Garland because for Merck Garland those are fighting words like he is the most um you know even kill person out there and when he's angry and I wouldn't want to upset somebody that smart and with that much power and that's what they've done to America Garland he has been trying to be so reasonable and I think he's catching up to the rest of us you can't be reasonable to unreasonable people but he has acted you know he was very moderate when Obama went to appoint him to the Supreme Court at the time he had voted very similar to Cavanaugh over all these years on the DC court of appeals he was a very moderate to maybe even slightly conservative and put into this position as attorney general taking it very seriously he's so professional Tred to always seem above board and this has finally gotten to him and you know what good like let's get him fired up uh he's definitely fired up in that interview he's frankly like just shocked um because the fact is that judge Canon what she tried to do was create new law you can't do that as a district on the district court level you can do that if you're at the Supreme Court level but you can't do it at her level she's just supposed to follow the law it's very clear the law is that special councils have been allowed they allowed that congressional act that you mentioned independent Council to lapse because they thought it was unnecessary and all these years since then everybody has acted as if the the current you know the pre-existing let's say Congressional statutes toward attorney generals allow them to do it so this is her trying to create new law and the thing about Judge Canon and I say this um a lot when I talked about her is because people uh often talked about her criticism saying she wasn't very smart and that's just giving her an out that that's not it she came from um Gibson denner Crutcher the same Law Firm I came from and the same Law Firm Ted Olson came from if you remember Ted Olen he represented Bush and Bush Vore um it's also got some liberal lions that Ted Bros was the one that filed the lawsuit when Jim Jordan was trying to subpoena Alvin Bragg just recently in the New York da Cas so there's both sides but there are some really high-powered political lawyers that come out of that law firm it is not a coincidence that she took a Justice Alo who is nearing retirment right and you said like she he called out to her and she heard back and she was auditioning like hey you can step down I will um rule as you would want to rule that was definitely like a um conversation let's say between the two of them because it was not based in the law and Trump and she did it in front of trump who she was hoping would win and be able to appoint a Supreme Court Justice and you know you know because a lot of times we see that right we see justices step down thinking that another Justice like them will go in their place we saw that when cavinol was replaced um I think it was with Brier that because he had clerked with him before so he was comfortable stepping down thinking he was going to replace him so that happens so she was clearly auditioning for the role of a substitute for justice Alo and frankly the only way to stop that is by having Cala win in November which as we talked about is looking really great but we still have to go out there and vote uh but that's what she was doing and um so you know this is this she's making it political but I love that Merck Garland he's he's he's got his uh he's got his he's got his fight in it now I think in a way he didn't before they have they have ratcheted it up and I wouldn't want to be somebody who's on the other side of Mer Garland once he's uh fired up welcome back that's legal AF a podcast where we curate the top four or five stories at the intersection of Law and politics and we bring 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