True, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago had rather a bad day in the New York courtroom on Tuesday. Apparently, the sound of the gears and wheels of his mind failing has become audible as Judge Juan Merchan smacked him for swearing out loud and otherwise acting out at the defense table while Stormy Daniels unspooled the story of the Worst First Date In History from the witness stand. The gaskets are just inches from blowing.

However, elsewhere, his cause goes marching on. Down in Florida, his dashboard statue of a judge, Aileen Cannon, pretty much took any trial on the pool shed papers off the schedule for the foreseeable future as what may (inshallah) be her final act as the judge in that case. From The Washington Post:

The judge had originally set the Florida trial date for late May, but that has seemed unlikely for months, with Cannon still needing to make decisions on a number of key legal issues before a jury can hear the case. In her ruling Tuesday, Cannon said there are many complicated legal rules and deadlines surrounding the use of classified evidence in public criminal trials that need to be considered before she picks a new court date. The order was a blow to special counsel Jack Smith and his team, who have argued that Trump’s team have had ample time to prepare for a summer trial and accused Trump’s lawyers of wrongly trying to use the three other criminal cases against him as a way to obfuscate and delay the legal proceedings in Florida.

Quite frankly, she's not even bothering to hide it any more. She's acting like she's in this to keep from having to preside over this case, either out of loyalty to her patron, or because she doesn't have the faintest idea how to preside over a trial, or both. (These are hardly mutually exclusive motives.) Among her other shortcomings, she obviously flunked Strategic Obfuscation in law school.

“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,” Cannon wrote.

Now who can argue with that?

Meanwhile, on Wednesday up in Georgia, an appeals court revived the outright ratfcking of Fulton County DA Fani Willis, which appeared to be not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead, after a week of comic opera courtroom drama at the end of March. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday decided to hear an appeal of a judge’s ruling allowing District Attorney Fani Willis to remain at the helm of Fulton County’s election interference case against former President Donald Trump. The court’s decision almost certainly means a significant delay of a trial here for Trump and his 14 co-defendants and signals that Willis’ leadership role isn’t guaranteed. It is unclear how long the appeals court will take to decide the issue but they are not known for moving swiftly.

(Let us pause here and consider the irony of reviving nudge-nudge-wink-wink charges about Willis' love life at the same time we're learning about the former president*s predilections for satin pajamas and magazine S&M. Life is strange.)

Eight defendants, including Trump, requested permission to appeal a few days after McAfee mostly denied a motion to disqualify Willis due to her romantic relationship with then-special prosecutor Nathan Wade. While McAfee ruled that Willis did not have an actual conflict of interest that warranted her removal, he said there was an appearance of a conflict that required her to make a choice. Willis could either recuse herself and her office from the case or cut ties with Wade, McAfee said. Within hours, Wade had tendered his resignation.

So now we have another couple of months where this nothingburger gets served up cold while Georgia appeals court judges play Tetris on their telephones and catch up on their sleep during their "deliberations." The law may be an ass, but it looks right now like a dead horse.

Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.