To be sure, there is no legal doctrine requiring that the criminal prosecution of a candidate for president be tried in advance of election day. Not that there was any reason for such a doctrine to exist until now, but there is none. That said, the prior rulings by Judge Aileen Cannon appointing a special master to oversee the search warrant inventory, reversed with the back of the Eleventh Circuit’s hand across her snout, suggested one of two things.

Either Judge Cannon wasn’t up to the job of being a federal judge, which wouldn’t come as a major surprise given her stunning lack of experience and extremely thin qualifications when she was appointed by then-president Trump.

Or she was in Trump’s pocket, at least to some extent.

My belief in institutional integrity compelled me to presume the former rather than the latter. Once appointed for life, Article III judges tend not to feel any sense of obligation to the president who gave them their robe, no matter how undeserved it may be. They know that their fidelity to president, party and politics will haunt them on the bench, making everyone from litigants to circuit judges taint them as unworthy, both of integrity as well as being taken seriously. Even judges aspire to respect from their peers, and the peers of federal judges are their fellow federal judges.

Of course, that aspiration is tempered by other aspirations, such as higher or different office. But I digress.

Pathetically, the order issued by Judge Cannon taking the Trump classified documents case off the trial calendar without a new date leaves me to believe that I gave her too much credit in chalking her special master ruling up to grave incompetence. This is not to say that she  is competent, but that even an incompetent judge would have minimally grasped that her steaming pile of self-created malarkey wouldn’t pass the sniff test from a thousand miles away.

The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury. The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice.

This isn’t a hard case. There aren’t difficult issues to be determined. A competent judge would have decided all outstanding motions in a month. An incompetent judge would have taken six weeks. Maybe eight if all her law clerks quit. The two words beginning with the letter “i,” imprudent and inconsistent, are the sort of meaninglessly vague verbiage federal judges employ to cover their butt.

The problem isn’t that the court shouldn’t “fully and fairly consider” pending motions, at least to the extent they aren’t facially ridiculous and intended to either pursue some delusional conspiracy attack, such that they would be summarily trashed by even the most modestly competent judge. The problem is that these motions only remain pending because Judge Cannon never decided them, even though they could have, and should have, been decided months ago. They’re just not that hard.

But what about the Speedy Trial Act, you ask?

Finally, the Court has evaluated the statutory factors set forth in the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7)(B), including the public’s interest in the efficient administration of justice. Upon such review, the Court finds that the ends of justice served by this continuance, through the last deadline specified in this Order, July 22, 2024, outweigh the best interest of the public and Defendants in a speedy trial. 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7)(A). Time under the Speedy Trial Act is therefore tolled—up to and including July 22, 2024—to permit adequate time for hearings and adjudication of substantive pretrial motions, discovery disputes, and CIPA issues, many of which present novel and difficult questions.

Under the Speedy Trial Act, the government has 70 days to bring a defendant to trial. This never happens. There are invariably motions that give rise to delays, as well as other reasons such as negotiation of a plea (which doesn’t apply here). But there are two interests the act serves, foremost of which is the defendant’s interest in getting out of pre-trial detention and out from under the taint of criminal accusation. Trump isn’t in jail and would apparently prefer to take his chances with an election than a trial.

But there is also a public interest involved, which Judge Cannon blithely dismisses as outweighed by her failure to decide motions for months. Cool story, judge.

It had been my hope that her absurdly dumb ruling in the special master case reflected her inexperience and challenged intellect, and was not the product of some sense of allegiance to the man who plucked her from obscurity and handed her a robe. My hopes have been dashed. This order precludes me from chalking it up to mere incompetence. This was conniving, which is not ordinarily considered a qualification for federal judge. Indeed, it should be frowned upon. I am frowning.