The New Judicial Trend That Bodes Terribly for Donald Trump

This week, a full six courts showed the importance of the rule of law and accountability for former president Donald Trump.

The rulings came from the federal courts in Georgia and Florida, from state courts in New York and Georgia, and from multiple appellate courts. The six decisions are cause for optimism about the state of our system of justice.

They demonstrate that judges from every jurisdiction and ideological bent finally appear to be on to Trump’s favorite litigation tactic—delay, delay, delay—and that they are through with it. It’s worth digging into each case individually to see the full picture.

First, on Tuesday, Judge Steve Jones rejected Mark Meadows’ emergency motion to stay his order from last week returning the RICO case against Meadows to state court. As I wrote earlier this week, Meadows is essentially serving as a stalking horse for Trump, which means that when he loses motion after motion to delay his case, Trump also loses.

In last week’s ruling, Jones held that when Meadows participated in the acts alleged in the indictment, he was not acting in his official federal government role as White House chief of staff. Rather, Jones ruled, Meadows was acting as an adjunct of Trump’s personal reelection campaign.

Then this week, it took the judge all of one day to turn aside Meadows’ request for an emergency stay of that ruling pending appeal. In doing so, he issued a 10-page opinion finding that Meadows had shown “no substantial likelihood of success on appeal.”

The court also held that “the state and federal interests at issue in Meadows’s action”—as well as the public interest—“actually favor the resolution of his case in state court, rather than in federal court.”

Those findings will not help Meadows’ appeal.

Jones’ denial in 24 hours of Meadows’ emergency motion was the mark of a court unwilling to tolerate any dallying in the search of justice.

In that impatience, Judge Jones was not alone, as demonstrated by our second key court decision. Meadows appealed on Tuesday, immediately after Jones rejected his emergency motion.

The same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit expedited both Meadows’ request to stay Jones’ ruling and briefing on the substantive issues.

Meadows withdrew the motion for the stay on Thursday after state court Judge Scott McAfee made clear that the case would not be tried with defendants who had sought a speedy trial on Oct. 23. On the substantive appeal, the court ordered all briefing to be completed within two weeks.

This is a court in a hurry.

It wasn’t the first time the same court had moved swiftly in a Trump-related matter. Last year, it took only eight days for the higher court to stay District Court Judge Aileen Cannon’s aberrant ruling favoring Trump in the Mar-a-Lago obstruction and national security case.

Ludicrously, she had appointed a special master to oversee the review of the documents seized in the FBI’s court-approved Aug. 8, 2020, search.

There was no precedent for such a ruling. It made no sense to have a special master expend judicial resources reviewing seized documents before anyone even knew whether Trump would be charged.

The 11^th Circuit’s expeditious handling last year of this matter involving Trump was not an isolated incident among federal appeals courts. In January 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit took but three months—warp speed in appellate court time—to reject a different Trump appeal.

In that case, the former president lost his claim that executive privilege shielded his White House documents from the House Jan. 6 committee.

Like Judge Jones’ one-day ruling, the quick action of the two courts of appeals in prior cases indicate that federal judges are well aware of, and unwilling to tolerate, Trump’s well-documented attempts to delay judicial proceedings against him.

That matters going forward. As his criminal cases proceed, Trump will almost certainly have one or two pretrial appeals to higher courts when trial judges deny Trump’s legal motions. Such appeals can stall the trials.

In those pretrial appeals, the quicker the higher courts act, the sooner his cases will be resolved. Prompt, well-considered resolution of his claims will be good for the public and for justice.

The third instance this week of a court treating the business of Trump’s trials seriously and expeditiously came on Monday, when New York Judge Juan Merchan released a Sept. 1 letter signaling that he might be willing to delay Trump’s current March 25 trial date on the Manhattan case in order to allow federal officials to expedite his more serious Jan. 6 charges.

He wrote: “We will have a much better sense [in February] whether there are any actual conflicts [with other Trump cases] and if so, what the best adjourn date might be for trial.”

Openness to a later date based upon trials in special counsel Jack Smith’s D.C. case and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ case—both of which allege Trump criminally conspiring to overturn the 2020 election—reflect a judge who understands the big picture of public need for the resolution of more significant cases.

The fourth instance is actually a surprise. In Trump’s classified documents case, Judge Cannon—previously seen as overly favorable to the former president—issued a protective order safeguarding national security.

On Wednesday, Judge Cannon granted the DOJ’s request for a protective order to potentially limit Trump’s ability to receive classified materials in discovery.

Significantly, the order specifically authorizes prosecutors to ask “the court for an order to prohibit the classified information [turned over to Trump’s lawyers] from being disclosed to [him].”

That strongly suggests that the judge understands that in the past, Trump has, at best, been reckless with the nation’s sensitive secrets and possibly something far worse.

Though this is only one sound ruling from Cannon so far, it’s important to note. No one can say for sure that she has learned from the court of appeals slapping down her mystifying pro-Trump decision appointing a special master last year.

For now, even if her pace in ruling was not up to the standard of the other courts, she appears to understand the potential need to protect certain national security materials from someone like Trump. That’s progress.

The fifth example of the courts demonstrating the need for speed when it comes to Trump came on Thursday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit accepted the request from Joshua Matz, E. Jean Carroll’s attorney, to expedite Trump’s appeal of the May jury verdict against him for defaming Carroll in 2019.

Trump claims that he is immune because he was president when he made the defamatory statements denying that he knew her and sexually assaulted her back in the mid-1990s. Attorney General Merrick Garland originally supported that claim, but in July, changed his mind.

In reversing himself, Garland decided that “he lacked sufficient evidence to conclude” that Trump’s defamatory statements about Carroll were within the scope of his presidential duties. Federal courts often defer to an attorney general’s decision about such matters.

On Thursday, the appellate court set a rapid briefing schedule of one month, signaling yet again that federal judges are not indulging Trump’s strategy of delay.

Finally, on Thursday, Georgia Judge Scott McAfee denied the motions of Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell to separate their trials from each other. This is a good sign for the judge’s appreciation of efficiency and joint trials for the other defendants who did not move for a speedy trial, including Trump.

Those other defendants will not be tried with Chesebro and Powell on Oct. 23. Not having requested a speedy trial, they are entitled to more time to prepare, as McAfee recognized in severing their cases from that of Chesebro and Powell.

When it comes time to deal with the anticipated motion of the remaining 17 defendants—or however many do not enter guilty pleas with plans to cooperate—McAfee’s ruling Thursday signals he will be inclined to try many, if not all, remaining defendants together.

Add this decision to the other five and you have a solid foundation for believing that the rule of law is asserting itself against a would-be reelected president bent on destroying it.