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Split Thread Trump Document indictment (as opposed to other indictments)

Hercules56 said:
Yes but this decision does not favor Trump, so Cannon decided to ignore it, cuz she is a MAGAt.
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The most relevant section:
Thus, if Special Counsel Mueller is a principal officer, his appointment was in violation of the Appointments Clause because he was not appointed by the President with advice and consent of the Senate. Binding precedent instructs that Special Counsel Mueller is an inferior officer under the Appointments Clause.

An inferior officer is one "whose work is directed and supervised at some level by others who were appointed by Presidential nomination with the advice and consent of the Senate." Edmond v. United States , 520 U.S. 651, 663, 117 S.Ct. 1573, 137 L.Ed.2d 917 (1997). In Edmond , the Supreme Court applied three factors to determine whether an officer was inferior: degree of oversight, final decision-making authority, and removability. Id. at 663–66, 117 S.Ct. 1573. According to Miller, those considerations point to Special Counsel Mueller being a principal, rather than inferior, officer because the Office of Special Counsel regulations impose various limitations on the Attorney General's ability to exercise effective oversight of the Special Counsel. But as foreshadowed in this court's opinion in In re Sealed Case , 829 F.2d 50 (D.C. Cir. 1987), a supervisor's ability to rescind provisions assuring an officer's independence can render that officer inferior. There, this court recognized that an independent counsel was an inferior officer because his office was created pursuant to a regulation and "the Attorney General may rescind this regulation at any time, thereby abolishing the Office of Independent Counsel."
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ETA: meant as a reply to original link poster, not Herc.
 
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W.D.Clinger said:
On 11 December 2023, Hunter Biden filed a MOTION TO DISMISS THE INDICTMENT BECAUSE SPECIAL COUNSEL WEISS WAS UNLAWFULLY APPOINTED AND THIS PROSECUTION VIOLATES THE APPROPRIATIONS CLAUSE, whose first sentence reads as follows:



The second paragraph begins with this sentence:



On 30 January 2024, Hunter Biden's attorneys replied to the government's response to that motion.

On 12 April 2024, District Judge Maryellen Noreika denied the motion. In addition to ruling that DOJ regulations did not confer a right on which Hunter Biden could rely, the judge ruled that the appropriations were constitutional:



As I have highlighted, Judge Noreika cited Jack Smith as one of six precedents showing "The use of the permanent appropriation to fund special counsel appointed after the independent counsel statutes lapsed is well established."

IANAL, but I believe this is an example of a judge's ruling that runs counter to the second part of Judge Cannon's decision, in which Cannon decided Jack Smith's funding was unconstitutional.
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referencing a motion from the hunter biden case would be gold
 
Ziggurat said:
I keep seeing quotes of other people saying the court ruled on this before. But I never seem to find quotes of an actual court itself making such a ruling. And the longer that goes on, the more I suspect that no such ruling exists.

And Walsh was appointed special counsel under the Ethics in Government Act Title VI, which is now expired. Under Cannon's ruling, his appointment is not equivalent to Smith's, so the validity of his appointment does not indicate that Smith's is valid.
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John Roberts Could be Aileen Cannon's Undoing

Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts was instrumental in creating special counsel regulations that were struck down by Judge Aileen Cannon in the classified documents case, a legal scholar has said.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, found the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel to oversee Trump's federal trials unconstitutional.

Department of Justice regulations allow for the appointment of special counsels in cases where the U.S Attorney General believes that they themselves may have a conflict of interest and need an independent attorney to lead a prosecution.

Norm Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor for The Atlantic magazine, recalled that Roberts was among those who drafted the rules. And Ornstein wrote that Cannon's ruling is unlikely to find favor in the U.S Supreme Court.

Ornstein recalled that in 1999, Republican senators, George Mitchell and Bob Dole, asked him to co chair a project on alternatives to the Independent Counsel statute that was expiring.
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Hercules56 said:
Yes but this decision does not favor Trump, so Cannon decided to ignore it, cuz she is a MAGAt.
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New in Harvard JLPP Per Curiam: What We Did and Did Not Argue in United States v. Trump

Second, the Nixon Court supported its decision by expressly relying on several statutory provisions, and on regulations put into effect in 1973 by Acting Attorney General Robert Bork.[9] Although the former statutory provisions remain in effect, the latter regulations were superseded by the Ethics in Government Act (1978), which created independent counsels. The 1978 act, because it was not re-authorized by Congress, expired in 1999. Subsequently, new regulations were put into effect in 1999 by Attorney General Reno. The Nixon-Court-era regulations for special prosecutors and the modern, now-in-force Reno regulations for special counsels are not the same. For that reason alone, Nixon is not and cannot be controlling: Nixon relied upon federal regulations which are no longer in effect.
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*case begins*

Pundits: "This is an open and shut case."

Cannon: "I need a definition of 'open' within 45 days' time."

*definition provided*

Cannon: "Does the government have a definition of 'shut?' I grant a 30 day window for submission to this court."

*sigh*

*Definition submitted*

Cannon: "Good. Thank you. However, this court is not seeing the relationship. I'm sending this back and giving the government six weeks to inform on the definition of 'open and shut' and- -"

Smith: "Oh, come ON!"

Cannon: "AND advise the prosecution to not waste any more of this court's time."

*Definition of 'open and shut' provided. Also 'case.' Also 'open and shut case.' Also 'a case that is open and shut,' 'a case that is shut following it being open,' 'a case is a wish your heart makes,' and 'a pretty case is like a melody'*

Cannon: "Relevance?"

*Also a Whitman's Sampler*
 
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There is legal value in forcing courts to distinguish between two cases that seem similar. The desire to do so in this case is clearly political, but abstractly that's how all court cases work. If Case A is different enough from Case B to decide it differently, the judiciary should explain why. Then that explanation holds for future similar controversies.

Until the Supreme Court decides none of that matters.
 
Segnosaur said:
I am not opposed to Hunter Biden doing this.

But.. I do think that his "challenge" is being done for political rather than valid legal reasons. (ie. he knows it will ultimately be unsuccessful but it will expose republican hypocrisy, perhaps force the supreme court to act on any appeals sooner than later, etc.)
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1) Judge Cannon ruled that Jack Smith's work was unconstitutional because Congress hasn't appropriated money for special counsels. This would apply equally to Hunter Biden's case.
2) DoJ regulations specify that a person appointed as a special counsel must be someone who is outside the government. In Hunter Biden's case, the special counsel is also a federal prosecutor, meaning that DoJ regulations were violated in the appointment of the special prosecutor.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
She also ruled that this only applies to Smith and not any other Special Counsel assigned in exactly the same way
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She can say that, but it has no judicial effect. None of her rulings reaches any further than her own court anyway. She cannot limit how other trial courts decide or why.

Norman Alexander said:
She has set a precedent for all similar cases. Doesn't matter that they are not exactly the case before her.
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Trial courts cannot set binding precedent, only appeals courts. However any court can refer to the reasoning in any case that administers the same law and use it for non-binding support. By incorporating the same reasoning as Judge Cannon, H. Biden causes it to be almost certainly reviewed by two different circuit courts.
 
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JayUtah said:
She can say that, but it has no judicial effect. None of her rulings reaches any further than her own court anyway. She cannot limit how other trial courts decide or why.



Trial courts cannot set binding precedent, only appeals courts. However any court can refer to the reasoning in any case that administers the same law and use it for non-binding support. By incorporating the same reasoning as Judge Cannon, H. Biden causes it to be almost certainly reviewed by two different circuit courts.
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Maybe she thinks she's on the SCOTUS now.
 
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