Arraigned again, I should say, and this time in Miami.
Washington Post:
Trump arraigned, pleads not guilty to 37 classified documents charges
After scowling through a court hearing, the former president tries to fundraise and hype his candidacy
Trump has denied wrongdoing in each case. He suffered another legal setback Tuesday when a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that writer E. Jean Carroll could add new defamation claims to a lawsuit she has filed against him. Carroll recently won a $5 million judgment against Trump in a different civil lawsuit in New York, after a jury found Trump sexually abused her decades ago and later defamed her.
And there’s more to come, in Georgia and Washington, D.C. (By the way, the Washington Post got it right, no need to flatter TFG.)
Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post:
Aileen Cannon should not preside over the Trump trial
The 11th Circuit’s ruling was particularly dismissive in reversing Cannon: “The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.” Specifically, the panel held she didn’t have jurisdiction and should not have ruled on the case.
To make matters worse, in the civil case, Cannon posited that Trump deserved special treatment because he is a former president (“[a]s a function of Plaintiff’s former position as President of the United States, the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own”). A judge who begins with the unconstitutional premise that Trump is not subject to the law like any other defendant would have a hard time sustaining public faith in the process. Any rulings for Trump would be regarded as evidence of bias; rulings against would be seen as efforts to restore her shattered reputation.
Greg Sargent /Washington Post:
Jim Jordan’s tortured defense of Trump points to a coming GOP split
To hear MAGA Republicans tell it, the indictment of Donald Trump for mishandling national security secrets is one of the most grotesque injustices in U.S. history. They have called for mass protests, vowed “war” in retaliation and even hinted that his supporters should rise up in armed rebellion.
So surely the GOP-controlled House will exercise maximal tactics to sabotage Trump’s prosecution as it gains steam in the coming months, right?
Rep. Jim Jordan went on CNN Sunday and offered a tortured defense of Trump that suggests a coming split among Republicans over how aggressively to fight for the former president. MAGA Republicans will expect the House to do everything within its power, but it’s not clear that the House can do all that much — or that many non-MAGA Republicans will even want to.
Trump’s rallies are smaller (see the indictment rallies in New York and Miami), the GOP defense is more tepid, and some of the primary rivals are downright critical (and not just Chris Christie). Those are political facts, interpret them as you will.
Speaking of facts, Steve Vladek on Aileen Cannon and something called Rule 29:
Richard L. Hasen/Slate:
There Are Still Two Major Legal Threats to the Voting Rights Act
Despite Roberts’ strong opinion in Milligan reaffirming the vitality of Voting Rights Act jurisprudence and confirming the constitutionality of Section 2, there’s no reason to expect that voting rights’ opponents will drop their attacks as they seek to maximize the power of white majority voters. And the varied opinions in the Milligan case leave open at least two major lines of attack against the VRA—that the act is no longer constitutional and that it does not give private plaintiffs a right to sue—that may once again test Roberts’ and Kavanaugh’s commitment to voting rights in cases down the road.
Thomas Friedman/New York Times:
Trump Thrives in a Broken System. He’ll Get Us There Soon.
The second way that Trump is trying to break our system was on display on Tuesday in Miami, where he followed his appearance as a federal criminal defendant with a political meet-and-greet at a Cuban restaurant. There, once again, Trump tried to discredit the rules of the game that would restrain him and his limitless appetite for power for power’s sake.
How does he do that? First, he gets everyone around him — and, eventually, the vast majority of those in his party — to stop insisting that Trump abide by ethical norms. His family members and party colleagues have grown adept at running away from reporters’ microphones after every Trump outrage.
But precisely because key political allies, church leaders and close family members will not call out Trump for his moral and legal transgressions — which would make his 2024 re-election bid unthinkable and hasten his departure from the political scene — we have to rely solely on the courts to defend the rules of the game.
It’s not a new thought but it’s one not emphasized enough lately. Trump is here through GOP enabling and we should never ever forget it, certainly not on Election Day.
David A. Graham/The Atlantic:
Instead of engaging with the substance of the charges he faces, the former president opted for grievance and misdirection.
But most of the president’s speech skirted any kind of real engagement with the charges against him. His central point was that he had the right to possess the documents he did under the Presidential Records Act, and that as president he had the power to declassify them. These arguments are neither new nor relevant. Trump has used them since the Mar-a-Lago search, though he has provided no evidence for declassification.
The problem for Trump that his indictment sidesteps these matters. Trump complained that the charges never mentioned the Presidential Records Act, and he is correct: It doesn’t engage with the question of whether he had a right to possess the documents. Instead, all of the charges focus on his actions after a May 2022 subpoena to return them. Once that request was made, he allegedly went to great lengths to hide documents from the federal government and even from his own attorneys, and this is where Smith homed in.
The bottom line is the MAGA voters don’t care. Trump is their team, end of story. But what we have to avoid doing is treating all Republicans and 2016 Trump voters as Team MAGA. They aren’t.
And maybe, just maybe, Chris Christie isn’t alone. Other 2024 candidates are making noises like they take this indictment seriously.
We will see.