Judges Behaving Badly Again

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan, on "inactive" status at Washington courthouse, asked former DOJ official Mary McCord to host him at Georgetown so he could vent about J6 and Trump.

Tomorrow, I will again be in the Fort Pierce, Florida courthouse to cover another hearing related to the classified documents case. Judge Aileen Cannon continues to battle Special Counsel Jack Smith’s over his demands to conceal what she considers public information on the court docket.

Cannon will hear arguments on defense motions filed by Trump’s two co-defendants—Waltine Nauta and Carlose De Olivera—to dismiss the case. She recently denied two motions filed by Donald Trump to dismiss the case for unconstitutional vagueness of the Espionage Act and under protections afforded by the Presidential Records Act.

I expect more fireworks tomorrow. Cannon just posted an order authorizing the release of Nauta’s voluntary interview with the FBI in 2022. While she also required that the name of government employees and potential witnesses must be redacted for now, the transcript should provide insight as to the FBI’s handling of Nauta’s interrogation. I plan to file an article over the weekend to let you all know what happened? (In between watching the Masters. By the way, my pick is Viktor Hovland.)

But I just discovered a fascinating interview between Judge Tom Hogan and Mary McCord at Georgetown in January 2024. McCord, one of the masterminds behind the ongoing lawfare against Trump dating back to the unlawful FISAs on his 2016 presidential campaign, clerked for Hogan decades ago.

If you want a view into the average mindset of a federal judge in Washington related to both January 6 and Trump, here it is. Hogan is now the third DC judge—joining Reggie Walton and former chief judge Beryl Howell—to make critical comments about Trump in public over the past few months.

Now you understand exactly what January 6 defendants are up against:

Trump also is set to go to trial in New York City on Monday in the so-called “hush money” prosecution brought by Alvin Bragg. Judge Juan Merchan, as I reported last week, is hopelessly compromised and should not be within 1,000 miles of this case.

Here is the jury questionnaire he recently ordered. Lots of laughs here—except, of course, none of this is funny.

https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/Letter-re-jury-selection-4-8-24.pdf