By Mike Huckabee
April 25, 2024
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It’s easy to see why Democrats have been losing their minds over Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, who presides over the so-called “classified documents” case against Trump. Those out to convict him can’t stand it that there might be even ONE JUDGE presiding over a Trump case who doesn’t share their goal of putting this former President and presumed Republican nominee in the slammer. Having the “right” judges for predetermined outcomes was something they probably thought they could take for granted, just as they have in Manhattan and DC.
But this is Florida, and, yes, Cannon is a Trump Administration appointee. (Considering Judge Juan Merchan in Trump’s Manhattan trial is a Biden DONOR, this shouldn’t be a big deal.) Since we’re not Democrats and therefore value objectivity, we’ve hoped from the start she would demonstrate it, and fortunately she seems to just be doing her job, the same even-handed job that other judges in Trump cases should be doing but aren’t. Any time a ruling goes in Trump’s favor, she’s condemned by Democrats as pro-Trump simply for recognizing that he has the same rights other defendants do. That can’t be allowed to stand; they want her removed from the case.
But they have no grounds, and on Monday, Judge Cannon did what the White House must have been dreading: she unsealed court documents that very strongly suggest a coordinated effort within the Biden Administration to target Trump for prosecution on alleged retention of “classified” documents right after he left office. Of course, we’ve known about such suspicions and reported on them, but here are the documents consistent with that. Other outgoing Presidents --- and Vice President Biden, who didn’t have the authority to declassify --- have taken such materials with them and were not prosecuted, but President Trump is being handled...differently.
Investigative reporter Julie Kelly posted on X, “Now you know why the insiders like Andrew Weissmann and Barb McQuade* are desperate to get rid of Judge Cannon. Without her courage on this matter, incriminating evidence of Biden’s WH and DOJ running the investigative show behind the scenes would be buried maybe forever.”
Kelly posted the biggest revelations on X. The first supports a story we reported at the time about Jay Bratt, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s lead prosecutor, allegedly suggesting to Stanley Woodward, the attorney for also-charged Trump aide Walt Nauta, that his pending nomination to the DC Supreme Court might be in jeopardy if he couldn’t get Nauta to flip on Trump.
That conversation allegedly happened a couple of weeks after the FBI’s raid on Mar-A-Lago, during Bratt’s first meeting with Woodward. The details of exactly what, according to the unsealed motion, Bratt said to Woodward are in the story linked below. Smith has responded that Woodward’s allegation against Bratt was “totally without merit,” in effect accusing Woodward, who has a stellar reputation, of making it all up.
The next revelation, perhaps the most significant one, is something else we’ve discussed here: allegations that the Biden White House was involved in the persecution---I mean, prosecution of Trump, essentially from the start of the Biden Administration. Trump was treated very differently by NARA (the National Archives) than other former Presidents have been, with the extremely proactive archivist, David Ferriero, saying in June 2021 --- just five months after Trump had left the White House during a chaotic transition --- that he was “out of patience” regarding the return of documents. He presumed that 24 boxes of documents had been destroyed and said he’d be reporting his claims to the White House and DOJ.
According to the filing unsealed by Cannon, by August, Ferriero was sending around the draft of a letter that “we could consider sending to the Attorney General about missing Trump records.” In an email, he said he had already “informally reached out to the DOJ counsel” and that “WH counsel is also aware of the issue.” As described in this filing, he appears to have been chomping at the bit to go after Trump and, yes, he was involving the Biden White House.
Something else very curious: The Department of Energy revoked Trump’s security clearance. But by then, Smith had already indicted Trump, which means Trump still had an active clearance, called a “Q” clearance, when Smith hit him with the documents charges.
They covered up this snafu later, as the DOE’s assistant general retroactively “instructed that the relevant systems ‘be immediately amended’ and ‘promptly modified to reflect the terminated status of [President] Trump’s Q clearance.’”
Trump has requested additional information related to the termination of his security clearance but the office allegedly declined to offer any. But Judicial Watch (bless them) is all over this; on Monday, they filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the DOE to obtain the records.
Julie Kelly compares the earlier, redacted filing with the new, unredacted filing released by Judge Cannon to show just what the special counsel had hoped to keep hidden. Surprise --- it’s the part about collusion between NARA and the Biden White House.
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