Aileen Cannon would be awful. Trump's pardon power will be far worse.

The name of the federal judge who acted like Trump’s defense attorney and disappeared his most obvious criminal charges against the X-President, at least for now, has been included on a list of Attorney General candidates for a second Trump regime.

While this might be the only way to remove 43-year-old Aileen Cannon from the federal bench, where she has a lifetime appointment, it’s also terrifying for reasons too menacing to ponder. But we really gotta. 

In the new Ball of Thread (which you can watch above), the second episode on the corruption of Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr, Marcy Wheeler uncovers the dirty work “The Cover-up General” did after he killed the Mueller Report. This malfeasance led to political prosecutions, the creation of propaganda for Trump’s 2020 campaign, and the illegal alteration of evidence of the sort that Barr’s DOJ prosecuted against an FBI lawyer who was working on the Russia investigation. And it also paved the way for January 6th.

But as bad as Barr was, he was not able to erase what Marcy calls “Zombie Mueller,” the web of crimes Trump’s allies committed as they tried to cover up his connections to Putin. Cannon would be unleashed in a way Barr was not. 

While Barr came into office with an immoral and nearly monarchical view of executive power, it was still just his guiding theory. Now, thanks the John Roberts and the Republicans on the Supreme Court, “absolute immunity” is the law. And that includes the ability to conduct “vindictive prosecutions,” like the one we’ve seen against Hunter Biden, with little or no legal check on that power.

But even with that abomination of the Constitution now presiding over us all, there is still some possibility that justice—I’ll use the little “j”—may catch up with one of Trump’s allies, the way it caught up with Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone. 

All three were convicted of or pled guilty to crimes, some of which related directly to covering up their and Trump’s ties to Russia. As Marcy has revealed in Ball of Thread, all three were tied to quid pro quos in which they, as Trump’s representatives, were trying to offer Putin’s representatives value in return for all the help the GRU put into electing Trump. 

But Mueller and the prosecutors that followed him were never able to get to the bottom of those high crimes because of one word: pardons.

All three men held out for them. All three got them.

In a new Trump regime, the big difference is no one would need to hold out. Trump could hand out pardons—as he has promised for all the traitors involved with January 6th—the way Ronny Jackson doled out goofballs. And he could do so immediately, avoiding any prosecutions that might uncover further crimes. 

Just think about it. Who’s going to stop him? The GOP supermajority on the Supreme Court? Republican Senators willing to convict and remove him? Ha.

This is no time for fantasies. A vote for Trump is for him to unleash his allies and persecute his enemies, like a king or a prince who favors bone saws. And he won’t need Aileen Cannon to do it.