Judge Cannon Manages To Out-Crazy Judge Kacsmaryk

And every other rightwing hack, too.

Judge Aileen Cannon is worse than Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, and that’s no mean feat.

Kaczmaryk is the anti-choice loon parked in Amarillo for the express purpose of turning back the clock on the 20th century. He’s the one who tried to retroactively remove the FDA’s two-decades-old approval of mifepristone and end medication abortion in America by lying about its health risks. As functionally the only judge in the Northern District of Texas’s Amarillo Division, his docket has become a litigation hotspot for every conservative wingnut in the country. But even he wasn’t hack enough to do what Judge Cannon did earlier this week.

Both Cannon and Kacsmaryk were presented with emergency requests to order Special Counsel Jack Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland to do something crazy, but only Kacsmaryk had the integrity to say NO! WTF? GO AWAY! (Or words to that effect.)

Judge Cannon, on the other hand, said GIDDYUP!

The Texas Goose Step

On November 8, just hours after Trump won the election, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (AKA THE DEVIL) filed a FOIA request for all of Jack Smith’s investigative materials. Three days later, he marched into Amarillo and demanded an injunction based on his “well-founded belief as set forth herein that Defendants will simply destroy the records.”

The complaint was characteristically batshit.

“Jack Smith’s team has conducted itself in multiple ways that suggest it cannot be blindly trusted to preserve, and eventually produce, all of its records,” he blustered. “Moreover, Jack Smith’s team has ample incentives to reduce to the maximum extent possible the odds that their records see daylight. After all, it has been thoroughly reported that persons close to the incoming President believe that Jack Smith’s team has broken the law.”

Paxton demanded an injunction ordering Special Counsel Smith to preserve all his records, something he’s obligated to do anyway by statute. And Judge Kacsmaryk said “no.”

Well, first he asked the government for a reply, and allowed them to present their side of the story, something Judge Cannon couldn’t be bothered with. Unsurprisingly, Attorney General Garland reported that “The Department of Justice is preserving records from the Special Counsel’s Office in the ordinary course pursuant to the relevant federal records schedule.”

After which, Judge Kacsmaryk penned a brief order, which began by laying out the four factors required for injunctive relief: (1) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits; (2) a substantial threat of irreparable injury absent the injunction; (3) that the threatened injury absent injunctive relief outweighs any harm from granting the injunction.

Then he articulated the legal standards for a preservation order: either “significant risk that relevant evidence will be lost or destroyed,” or “(1) the level of concern for maintaining the integrity of the evidence in question; (2) any irreparable harm likely to result from a failure to preserve; and (3) party capability to preserve evidence.”

Normally, we wouldn’t go through all this in such painstaking detail. But — spoiler alert! — Judge Cannon skipped that part, too.

Then Judge Kacsmaryk pointed out that Paxton had produced no evidence that the DOJ was going to destroy records other than internet rumors of a mobile shredding truck parked outside DOJ, a claim the court derided as “unserious.”