Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Judge Cannon LUXURY GIFT SCANDAL Grows…
Episode Date: May 7, 2024Judge Cannon “presiding” over the Mar a Lago criminal case against Trump, just got caught with her hands in the cookie jar by failing to disclose her long standing relationship with the Federalist... Society and accepting tens of thousands of dollars of all expense paid luxury retreats that attack the democratic and progressive legal agenda. Michael Popok puts a spotlight on the judge and what prosecutors may do next as they look at her adverse rulings against them including the recent one delaying the trial yet again, with new eyes. Go to https://WashingtonPost.com/LEGALAF to subscribe for just 50 cents per week your first year. Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is Michael Popak, Legal AF, Judge Aileen Cannon presiding over Mar-a-Lago.
Gotcha.
NPR has discovered that for two years running, Judge Aileen Cannon, without
disclosing it appropriately on the federal form she's required to disclose paid
trips on, went not once, but twice on all expense paid trips sponsored by George Mason University and the Antonin Scalia
School of Law, which was funded and founded officially by one Leonard Leo, the founder of
the Federalist Society. They hold colloquiums where they bring in lots of judges, all right-wing Republican judges to the Federalist Society
to hear lectures on topics about woke law
and the problem with that
and basically attacking the democratic
or progressive agenda.
Aileen Cannon went on one of these all-expense pay trips,
probably totaling about $10,000 in 2021 and 2022.
And certainly while she was presiding over a case
involving Donald Trump.
Now look, ProPublica just won a Pulitzer
for exposing the all-expense paid trips
and relationships between Clarence Thomas
and right-wing MAGA donors
that he's been taking for years without
disclosing it and tens of thousands of dollars a year on yachts on private
jets to hunting lodges you know thousand two thousand dollars a day but he's not
presiding at present over the Mar-a-Lago case Aileenileen Cannon is, so we need to talk about her.
Now look, George Mason University
is the rightest of right-wing universities.
It's law school named after Antonin Scalia,
funded by the Koch brothers,
funded by Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society.
You can sort of figure out what is going on
inside of that incubator, right?
And federal judges and Supreme Court judges regularly go to George Mason University for
colloquiums and seminars and all-expense paid boondoggles that are paid for by these right-wing
MAGA people to rub elbows with other right-wing MAGA people before they return to the bench to make decisions for you and me. Justice is blind? I don't think so, and certainly not
on these all-expense paid trips and luxury resorts. Now, Alien Cannon is not the only person
that participates in these kind of events sponsored by George Mason University and the law school.
There are 75 other judges,
appellate and district court judges, federal,
that have also participated.
Some of the Supreme Court justices that I've just outlined,
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett,
have all, Thomas Alito, have all at one time or another taken an all
expense paid trip paid for by the Federalist Society. Let's just put it that way. Should
that come as any shock? Now look, the Democrats do it too. I mean, I don't want to, you know,
it's good for the goose and the gander. I mean, there are plenty of trips that are paid for
for the progressive wing of the Supreme Court
where they go away every summer to their, you know,
sabbaticals for the summer and go teach in Italy
or in Europe somewhere and somebody's footing the bill.
Right? It's just not so blatant.
You know, they're not taking all expensive paid trips
paid for by the ACLU, although they should.
But Aileen Cannon didn't disclose on her federal form that she took these trips.
She had 30 days within, people are upset about it.
She had 30 days within which to disclose on her federal form, her privately funded seminar disclosure form.
And until NPR National Public Radio contacted her about it, she hadn't posted
it for either twenty, twenty one or twenty, twenty two.
I mean, a judge that constantly torments the prosecutors about being more
transparent, you need to be more transparent.
We have to have more documents and information
that could put witnesses at risk on the public docket.
This is about transparency and the public's need to know.
She certainly got pretty opaque
when it came to her own participation
in Federalist Society all-expense paid trips and vacations.
Why?
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It's something she's embarrassed by.
She doesn't want the public to know.
Apparently she doesn't want the public to know
that she did these things.
Because if she did, she would state it out loud and proud. I am a Federalist.
I go on $10,000 a trip at all expense paid by the Federalist Society, by the Koch brothers,
by Leo Frank and the rest, or sorry, Leonard Leo, sorry.
And I like rubbing elbows with other Federalists
and we make fun of Progressives and Democrats.
And that's me.
Just say it.
Just come out and say it and disclose it.
If I were the prosecutors, I'd be looking into,
huh, is this something that, you know, we need, we needed to have known about at the time and decided whether to
move to disqualify. Now I'll tell you, it generally doesn't work that way. You got
75 other appellate and trial court judges who are right wing, who attend
these same things. They just disclosed them. Supreme Court had its own issues,
right? That was the ProPublica report
that won the Pulitzer because Clarence Thomas didn't disclose these things. And we didn't know
about his close relationship with the Crow family and other right-wing mega-donors, including
Nazi memorabilia collecting Holocaust denying donors and those relationships.
We didn't know that Clarence Thomas sold property to people who had business before the court.
He borrowed money in order to buy his homestead, that he borrowed money from right-wing MAGA in
order to pay the tuition of his nephew. We didn't know any about that.
Doesn't stop Clarence Thomas from presiding over one of the most corrupt Supreme Courts
in a long time.
He never recuses himself.
He never disqualifies himself.
Yeah, sure, he may not show up one day unannounced for oral argument without explanation, but
that's not the same thing as officially recusing himself from a case because, I don't know, his wife was involved with
trying to overthrow democracy, Ginny Thomas or something like that. Now I'm
focused at the molecular level at the Mar-a-Lago case. We have reporting we did
right here on the Midas Touch Network that just the other day, Aline Cannon, the
$10,000 a trip, Federalist Society loving Aileen Cannon, just helped out Donald
Trump again and let him off the hook about a deadline that she set weeks or months ago
for him to disclose any confidential information under the classified information under the SIPA,
Classified Information and Procedures Act, that he has to disclose to the prosecutor so they can get this trial going in Mar-a-Lago. And she knew that the trial in
New York had already started, or was going to start at the end of April. And yet, she just,
without any resetting of the date, she just said, no, you don't have to make your deadline.
Without that deadline being met, Donald Trump's trial will never happen before November.
Managing expectations here as we like to do
on the MidasTouch and Legal AF.
So, you know, am I a conspiracy theorist?
I mean, not usually,
but do I think it's an interesting data point
that we should have known before
that Alien Cannon regularly rubs elbows
on an all-expense pay trips paid for by the Federalist Society to the Antonin
Scalia colloquium in Montana on a regular basis? Yeah, I would like to have
known that and I would have liked to have reported on that and I would like
the prosecutors have known it so they could have worked it into their analysis
as to whether to move to recuse or disqualify Aileen Cannon. And only because NPR shined a light on the issue and called up her chambers
that she then fill out the forms years late about it,
meaning she had no intention of disclosing to the public
and being transparent about what she had done until she was caught
with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar.
We'll continue to follow everything at Mar-a-Lago
and keep you posted.
We're not completely distracted by the trial in New York.
We're fixated on it, we're focused on it,
we're covering it, lots of other news
involving the intersection of law and politics
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