Some info on Judge Florence Pan, one of the judges on the 3-judge panel hearing oral arguments on Trump's appeal of Judge Chutkan's order denying presidential immunity in J6 case.
Pan, appointed by Joe Biden, is married to Max Stier--a Dem Party activist and one of Brett Kavanaugh's chief antagonists. Stier claimed he observed Kav engaged in lewd behavior at Yale--he reported it to FBI and Senate during Kavanaugh debacle. He was recently featured in a film about Kavanaugh that criticized the FBI's investigation into various claims.
A longtime DC fixture, Pan has friends in high places.
From WashPo in 2021: "In one of her first hearings Wednesday, Pan took over the politically sensitive lawsuit brought by 2016 Trump campaign adviser Carter Page against the FBI, Justice Department and several former officials alleging they unlawfully surveilled and investigated him during the FBI’s Russia probe.
A D.C. veteran, Pan offered to recuse herself from the case, saying she has been friends with a lawyer for defendant Lisa Page, a former FBI attorney. Pan said she has known Page’s attorney, former Justice Department lawyer Amy Jeffress, for 27 years, attended her wedding, and met Page at a party."
Jeffress is married to DC District Court Judge Chris Cooper, appointed by Obama.
Merrick Garland officiated the wedding.
Isn't DC cute?
Although 3-judge panels are supposed to be "randomly" selected, Pan oddly is seated on an unusually high percentage of consequential political cases. She was on BOTH panels to hear arguments on an appeal related to 1512c2, obstruction of an official proceeding.
Pan was the decisive 2-1 judge in both decisions upholding DOJ's use of the post-Enron statute. Her lead opinion--and I use that term pejoratively--in Fischer v USA is now under review at SCOTUS.
While Pan admitted the "novel" use of 1512c2 in J6 cases--more than 300 J6ers slapped with the evidence tampering felony for their conduct on Jan 6 as is Donald Trump--she nonetheless adopted the broadest reading of 1512c2 to uphold DOJs interpretation.
Pan--and Childs, also on today's panel--upheld Judge Beryl Howell's nondisclosure order preventing Twitter from notifying Trump about Jack Smith's subpoena of his data and Howell's $350,000 fine against the company. Pan: "The whole point of the nondisclosure order was to avoid tipping off the former President about the warrant’s existence."
Pan--and Childs again along with Obama appointee Cornelia Pillard--also upheld Howell's extraordinary ruling that pierced atty-client privilege btw Evan Corcoran and Trump in classified docs case, forcing Corcoran to turn over all his records to Jack Smith.
A decision, by the way, that never should have been made in DC since the alleged "crime" happened in southern Florida. Pan expressed no jurisdictional concerns there.
Pan has been assigned to several panels for appeals filed by J6 defendants. Just last week. Pan denied the appeal of Russel Alford, convicted by a DC jury of 4 misdemeanors and sentenced by Judge Chutkan to 12 months in prison.
This is the thinking J6ers must deal with. (Henderson, on today's panel, wrote this but Pan concurred):
"The trial evidence indicated that, during Alford’s brief time within the Capitol, he was neither violent nor destructive. Nevertheless, we affirm his convictions because a jury could rationally find that his unauthorized presence in the Capitol as part of an unruly mob contributed to the disruption of the Congress’s electoral certification and jeopardized public safety."
He was inside for 11 minutes.
Her performance today was less than compelling--superior, smug, combative, and dull.
She clearly came in ready to defend DOJ/Jack Smith--and her preposterous hypothetical about a president using Seal Team Six to kill a political rival was a set up to result in all the deadlines we are already seeing.
As I have suggested to some officeholders and candidates--the DC federal courts must be shut down. These partisans are making some of the most important judicial decisions in the nation's history and are ill-equipped to do so.
Judge Florence Pan is exhibit A.
