Donald Trump Gets His Ass Kicked In Court. No, A DIFFERENT Court.

State and federal courts on the same day? Impressive.

In other happy news, Donald Trump is having a bad day in ALL the courts. Obviously, there's that whole indictment thing. But before he got fingerprinted in Manhattan, Trump started the morning getting his ass kicked by the DC Circuit.

This is going to require a journey through the federal court docket, so ... grab your reading glasses and get in, nerd, we're going lawsplaining!

Remember last summer when Mark Meadows told the House January 6 Select Committee he wasn't going to cooperate anymore with their subpoena for documents and testimony? By coincidence (LOL), that decision to flip off the committee came approximately five minutes after Trump's PAC gave $1 million to Meadows's employer, the Conservative Partnership Institute. But the Justice Department ignored the referral from Congress and declined to prosecute Meadows and Trump's comms flack Dan Scavino for contempt, so, that was the end of that.

But if you blow off a grand jury, or shout EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE in response to every question, you wind up with a different result. Also, Special Counsel Jack Smith is no Attorney General Merrick Garland. (And he's not Bob Mueller either, while we're making comparisons.) So Smith's team went straight to the US District Court in DC, where then-Chief Judge Beryl Howell has dropkicked every single one of Trump's privilege claims, on grounds of PISS OFF, THIS IS A COUP INVESTIGATION. Well, more or less. The orders are sealed, so we don't really know. But judging by all the reporting, it seems that's the long and short of it.

On March 24, ABC reported that Judge Howell had overruled Trump's privilege claims for Meadows, Scavino, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, former national security adviser Robert O'Brien, gross bigot monster Stephen Miller, acting DHS head (and gross bigot monster) Ken Cuccinelli, and Trump aides Nick Luna and Johnny McEntee. We broke it down for you last week, and we also mentioned that Judge Howell had abrogated attorney-client privilege with respect to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran. That post was extra fun, not only because we would dearly love to do LOCK HER UPS to Trump, but because his lawyers waited several days to file an emergency appeal of that order seeking a stay, something they should have done that very night . The DC Circuit issue a temporary stay, ordered the two sides to brief the issue overnight — breaking the judicial land speed record — and then dissolved the stay the following day, ordering Corcoran to testify.

High comedy, and ... you see where all this is going, right?

Now, let's head over to the docket for this case, which has proceeded entirely under seal.

On March 29, Trump and his lawyers finally moseyed into the DC Circuit and filed their appeal. Take your time, boys!

That's not an emergency appeal — that's just put them in the regular line. They don't get around to filing for an emergency stay until 9 PM YESTERDAY.

At 11: 18 p.m., the three judge panel (two Obama appointees and Judge Katsas, one of Trump's worst nominees), issue a sealed order for the government and Trump to brief the issue. Now, we don't know what that order says, but we take a pretty good guess, since the the government responded at 1:25 a.m., and Trump's people turned in their homework at 9:27 a.m.

At 12: 12 p.m., the panel issued a per curiam order (that means it was unsigned) denying the motion to stay Judge Howell's order.

That means that Meadows, Scavino, Miller, and all the rest of those goobers are going to have to get their lily white asses down to Special Counsel Smith's grand jury and say what they saw. And, yes, it's possible that Trump will appeal this order to the Supreme Court. He's certainly got every incentive to take a chance on SCOTUS, considering that Mark Meadows was part of the fake electors scheme, and the effort to ratfuck the Georgia vote count, and the attempted coup at the DOJ, and the pre-riot rally on the Ellipse, and the actual plan to storm the Capitol. But the Court has shown exactly zero interest in protecting Trump since he left office, rejecting, among other things, Trump's demand to shield his presidential records and his tax returns from Congress. So, while he might get a short administrative stay, this weird, opaque docket may be even worse news for Trump than that indictment we're all waiting for.

It's a beautiful day.

[ In re: Sealed Case (23-3043) , Docket via Court Listener]

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