MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was so mystified by the latest ruling by District Court judge Aileen Cannon that he wondered if it had been written by Donald Trump himself.
The federal judge selected a special master to sort through documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago, but Palm Beach state attorney Dave Aronberg told “Morning Joe” that he was astonished by her reasoning to withhold top-secret government materials from the Department of Justice.
“Judge Cannon didn’t even accept that the documents, which have classified markings, and some of them have those red covers that blaze out ‘top-secret SCI,’ and she didn’t even accept that they were classified documents, and despite there was an unchallenged affidavit included by DOJ from the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division that these were classified documents,” Aronberg said. “She ignored that and bought Trump’s argument of, ‘Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?'”
Scarborough agreed, and said the ruling was problematic and hard to understand for a number of reasons.
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“You’re exactly right, and it’s really one of the most troubling parts of the ruling for me,” Scarborough said. “The fact that you have a judge, a district court judge who just got appointed after Trump lost, on the bench for a year or so, going, you know what, we can’t really trust the intel agencies to properly mark what is top secret — we don’t know that — and then on top of that, she’s talking about leaks. Did Donald Trump actually write this opinion?”
“Legally, it’s bizarre,” Scarborough added, “and I’m sure she’s sitting here thinking that this — maybe she’s thinking because nothing else seems to be make sense — this is her pathway, if Trump gets re-elected, to a higher court. All she’s doing is make herself radioactive, because she’s going to be reversed, and she’s done things that intel experts are saying puts America’s national security at risk. I wouldn’t want that hanging over me as a new judge.”
Analyst John Heilemann said the entire process was corrupt, because Trump’s attorneys had specifically targeted the federal courthouse where Cannon is the only judge.
“That thing that Dave pointed to that you, just talked about where she basically saying, ‘OK, so I’m this new judge, appointed here by Trump, Trump came to my court in one of the most naked examples of forum shopping I’ve ever seen, they came here looking for something, I don’t care what this looks like, I’m not just going to rule in his favor, I’m not just going to give him more than he asked for, I’m going to write my opinion that these documents that have been stamped classified, that have been reviewed by the intel community and identified as classified, that the basis of the warrant is that they are classified, they are brought back on the basis of the search and they found them to be classified,'” Heilemann said. “She in her courtroom says, ‘You know what, all of that, and the big bright red letters, classified stamped on the documents,’ she’s like, ‘I’m not sure those documents are classified.'”
“That is literally the Trumpiest thing that a Trump judge has ever written,” Heilemann said. “It’s the pure essence of the kind of judicial corruption that Trump has brought on the court system, and you know, the reason you wouldn’t do it, and the reason we’re stunned by it, you’re a country lawyer and I’m a poor country pumpkin, we used to say, that’s the thing about judges, they often depart from the person who appointed them. You can never count on it. You know, that day has passed now. A lot of these judges, and this one first and foremost, are political hacks. She doesn’t care about the stuff that any other judge would care about.”