‘Fundamentally lawless’: Legal analyst shreds Judge Cannon’s 'outrageous' Trump ruling

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is entirely without power to block the Justice Department from releasing special council Jack Smith’s report into President-elect Donald Trump’s two criminal investigations, Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern wrote in a blistering rebuke of the order.

The Tuesday ruling from the Trump-appointed far-right judge appeared to befuddle Stern, who wrote that of the many "wildly indefensible" court decisions issued by Cannon, none have been as "perverse" as her latest legal finding favoring the incoming president.

“Her order is fundamentally lawless — not even in a debatable sense, but objectively just outside the law,” Stern wrote Wednesday in a stinging takedown of the ruling that he called “outrageous” and “startling.”

“Cannon literally has no authority to impose this injunction, and has not bothered to explain why she thinks she does. It is a fitting finale to her ignominious reign over the prosecution that she ruthlessly suppressed,” Stern added.

The problem, Stern told readers, is that Cannon simply cannot issue her injunction.

"The startling breadth of her order is extremely dubious, but the legal flaw runs even deeper; she is purporting to exercise authority that she just does not have," he said.

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That’s because Cannon handed over jurisdiction of the case to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has declined to grant relief on the very issue she weighed in on, according to Stern.

“She therefore lacks any power to interfere with the Justice Department’s release of Smith’s report,” he added.

There are even more “jurisdictional defects” in the order “that render it even more outrageous,” the analyst said. As a non-party to the case, it is not entirely clear that Attorney General Merrick Garland can be forbidden by a judge from releasing the report, he wrote.

“Nor is it evident where Cannon would even derive the power to meddle with the Justice Department’s operations on such a granular level,” Stern said.

He concluded his criticism by writing that Cannon’s ruling makes perfect political sense – for Cannon – who he said, “has acted much more like an advocate for Trump than a neutral arbiter.”

And with Inauguration Day less than two weeks away, the public may never grab a glimpse of the report.

But, Stern warned, “a jurist as shameless as Cannon has plenty of tools left at her disposal to run out the clock, keeping the entire report on ice until Trump comes in and buries it for good.”