In Reply to: We don't love those tarrifs. posted by mh on October 29, 2025 at 11:48:24
Federal prosecutor David Raskin was expecting that the criminal case he had helped build against former president Donald Trump would be filed in Washington, D.C., when a colleague bumped into him with surprising news: Their boss, special counsel Jack Smith, had decided to bring the case in Florida.
“Are you all f---ing insane?” Raskin blurted out to his fellow prosecutor on that spring day in 2023, in a hallway at a Justice Department building in D.C.
Smith and his top deputies had concluded that trying the case in Florida put them on firmer legal ground, reducing the risk of the most serious charges being overturned on appeal. And members of their team had initially calculated that there was just a 1 in 6 chance that a case in Florida would land in Cannon’s courtroom.
“I’m not worried about Florida,” Smith said later when presenting his decision to Justice Department officials.
But the early calculation of the odds that Cannon would get the case — and Smith’s faith that the evidence could win her over even after she did — turned out to be wrong.