“But for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” the report said.
“But for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial,” the report said.
To clarify, the charges brought in the Florida district could have been brought in another venue, but the crime was the documents being withheld in Florida, so that is the correct venue. It could have gotten way through the process and been appealed due to incorrect venue and we would have been back at the start.
That said, I think getting Cannon removed would have been more likely to bear fruit. She had clear evidence of bias and would have been way past the threshold of appearance of impropriety, so getting her removed would have been a fairly likely path to success. Unfortunately the supreme court was so flooded by idealogues that it would have been appealed and they would have either held it up or overturned it and gotten her back on, or just dismissed the case in some other way.
What was needed was a much more aggressive approach from both Biden and Garland. Biden to change the number of supreme court justices and to direct his justice department to deeply investigate all of the justices on the court. Garland to open said investigations, push for intelligence agency support, and lots of speaking indictments to get information in front of voters.
Thanks for this amazing comment.
After reading this, I searched and read this msnbc blog synopsis that gets into a little more detail about possible motives for Smith’s choice of venue that basically reiterates choosing to prosecute in a different district could have thrown a guilty verdict into question.