Investigating The Investigators: Aileen Cannon Edition
Incisive new reporting from Charlie Savage on the sprawling investigate the investigators charade going on in South Florida puts U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon back in the thick of things.
What’s emerged in the last few weeks is that Miami U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones is overseeing a criminal investigation that stretches all the way back to the 2016 election. He has reportedly issued subpoenas to investigators of the 2016 Trump-Russia connection, including former CIA Director John Brennan and FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page.
- Reding Quiñones has empaneled an “extra” grand jury in Ft. Pierce, Florida, where only Judge Cannon of Mar-a-Lago case fame can oversee it. “He has not said why he is putting an extra grand jury 130 miles away in Judge Cannon’s courthouse,” Savage reports.
- Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has been supervising Reding Quiñones’ investigation of the investigators through a low-level official in the DAG’s office named Christopher-James DeLorenz, who was a Cannon law clerk until August 2024, according to Savage.
- Cannon’s oversight of the “extra” grand jury means she is “in charge of disputes like requests by recipients of subpoenas to quash them, on grounds ranging from an expired statute of limitations to claims of privilege, or requests by prosecutors to compel such witnesses to testify under threat of being jailed for contempt of court,” Savage reports.
If Mike Davis — the shit-stirring conservative legal activist — is to be believed, the Ft. Pierce grand jury is being used to advance a grand theory that the Deep State conspired to deprive Donald Trump of his civil rights. Davis was more coy with the NYT. Cannon, of course, interfered with the criminal investigation of Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case before he was indicted, then was randomly assigned his case and dismissed the indictment entirely, after slow-rolling the case for months.
The chance to use a grand jury under Cannon’s auspices to run an open-ended investigation pegged to the Mar-a-Lago search that sweeps up Trump grievances, paybacks, and scores to settle dating all he way back to the 2016 election has the potential to be the most dangerous and damaging of Trump’s many investigate the investigator retributions.
The Retribution: James Comey Edition
Former FBI Director James Comey on Friday filed a new motion to dismiss the indictment against him, rolling up all of the revelations over the course of last week about the unusual and perhaps fatally flawed handling of the grand jury by interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan.
Big Revelation in Abrego Garcia Case
In a statement to the WaPo on Friday, Costa Rica Security Minister Mario Zamora Cordero blew up the Trump administration’s deeply misleading representations to the judge in one of the Abrego Garcia cases.
Zamora Cordero said Costa Rica’s offer from August to accept Abrego Garcia and give him legal status still stands — which flies in the face of claims by the Trump administration that Costa Rica will no longer accept him. The Trump administration is insisting on deporting him to one of several African countries, most recently Liberia, to which he has no previous ties. As I wrote at length last week, the Trump administration has repeatedly defied court orders to provide a fact witness who can attest in court to its representations about Costa Rica.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers immediately notified the judge in his civil case of the new reporting from the WaPo, and his lawyers in his criminal case cited the report as additional evidence that his prosecution is vindictive, punishment for having exercised his legal rights to challenge his wrongful removal from the United States to El Salvador earlier this year.
Special Protection For Kash Patel’s Girlfriend
FBI Director Kash Patel enlisted two SWAT-trained FBI agents in Atlanta to protect his aspiring country music singer girlfriend at the NRA’s annual convention last spring, the NYT reports.
Arizona Fake Electors Case Not Completely Dead Yet
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that she will ask the state’s Supreme Court to revive the Trump 2020 fake electors case that was tossed out by the trial judge.
The Epstein Files
The Trump DOJ has renewed its previously rejected request for a federal judge in Florida to unseal the grand jury testimony related to Jeffrey Epstein and his confidante Ghislaine Maxwell. In the new motion filed late Friday, the Trump DOJ cited the recently passed law ‘ demanding that the department release its Epstein files as the basis for renewing its request to the court.
Meanwhile, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton faces a slew of complications, including a potential conflict of interest, in responding to the “baldly political directive” he received from Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate only Democrats’ connections to Epstein, Politico reports.
Alito Reinstates Texas’ Pro-GOP Map
Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary administrative stay allowing Texas to continue using its new pro-GOP congressional district map while the Supreme Court considers whether to put a lower court ruling throwing out the map on hold while the state’s appeal proceeds.
Venezuela Watch
- Since taking office 10 months ago, the Trump White House has repeatedly “steamrolled or sidestepped government lawyers” who questioned its lethal high seas strikes on alleged drug traffickers, the WaPo reports.
- Joint Chiefs chair Dan Caine is visiting the region today, meeting with U.S. service members in Puerto Rico.
- The Trump administration is poised to affix the label “foreign terrorist organization” on Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles, which experts says is neither a cartel, nor a group, nor even a hierarchy.
The Corruption: Pardon Edition
The right-wing provocateurs Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl — convicted in Ohio and awaiting sentencing in Michigan for racist robocalls — were paid $960,000 by former nursing home magnate Joseph Schwartz for help seeking a presidential pardon. Schwartz, who was sentenced earlier this year to three years in prison for defrauding the government of $38 million, was pardoned by President Trump on Nov. 14, after serving only three months.
Schwartz is not the only client paying Burkman and Wohl for pardon help, as NOTUS has reported.
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