I’m not a lawyer, and I didn’t read every word of this, but I found this impressive. I would not want to try and BS this judge. And I feel like the government was trying to BS this judge.
When the judge noted that Archie Cox was his constitutional law professor, it was a way of slapping down Dreeben and warning him that he better not act condescending toward the judge in this court.
This jurisdictional issue involving the Special Counsel may be more serious for the Special Counsel than Rosenstein, Mueller and Dreeben are treating it.
The very first issue in any case in federal court is, does the court have jurisdiction to deal with this matter?
Here, the DOJ has taken a private citizen (not an existing US Attorney, not confirmed by the Senate) Bob Mueller, and unilaterally granted him the power to prosecute people in federal court and send them to prison.
That power depends wholly on the jurisdiction granted Mueller, and if he exceeds it, his legal power vanishes.
I'm not a lawyer, either...but I've testified enough in proceedings and actual trials, that I learned very quickly that a good judge has a running memory.
By that I mean that he can keep several paragraphs running in his head, whereas the usual trial attorney or person testifying can only run several sentences.
I've seen judges that could hold nearly a full page of transcript in their heads at one time.
Hard to explain, but suffice to say, this judge has got his doo-doo in one bag, tied tight.
I think we will see something dramatic come from this.