It had been little over a week since President Joe Biden called Donald Trump and his supporters "semi-fascist" when a Trump-appointed judge, Aileen Cannon of Florida, proved Biden's point. While most Americans were too busy enjoying Labor Day cookouts to pay much attention to the news, Cannon let loose with a decision breathtaking in its disregard for both the law and the judicial branch's legitimacy.
In one sense, it's not a surprise that Cannon, a judge who Trump selected precisely because he knew how corrupt she was, eagerly issued a ruling slowing down the Department of Justice's (DOJ) efforts to investigate Trump's theft of hundreds of classified documents from the U.S. government. But even though she had already taken the highly unusual action of signaling her intention to do her crony this favor, the most cynical observers of Trump's shady judicial appointees were surprised at how far she took it. Cannon not only threw a bunch of wrenches in the DOJ's ability to investigate a former president, undergirding her decision with the same logic of the Big Lie and the January 6 insurrection, but she extended a nearly unlimited right to Trump to break the law. As national security legal expert Bradley Moss noted on Twitter, this ruling "is meant for Trump and Trump alone," giving him special rights not enjoyed by any other person in the country, including the actual president. All of this, even though Trump is a private citizen and not the president at all.
