"Judge hands defeat to Trump and Cohen," blares the headline.

Kimba Wood...Kimba Wood...where have I heard that name before?  Well, look at this.  She was Bill Clinton's second choice to be attorney general, after the Zoe Baird nomination blew up.  Kimba's blew up, too, because she forgot to tell the White House she had employed an illegal as a nanny.

Is this amazingly great luck for the Mueller-U.S. attorney tag team or what?

But don't be downhearted.  Judge Wood has it all doped out: "I have faith in the Southern District U.S. Attorney's office that their integrity is unimpeachable," Judge Wood said. 

Remember how we were treated to glowing tales of how Comey and Mueller were "Boy Scouts," straight arrows both, who played it straight down the middle, eminently fair?  And besides, they're both Republicans!  Gasp!

Now we learn that the Southern District U.S. attorney's office is "unimpeachable."  How about a soft-focus story in Time about how the attorneys there volunteer at dog rescues and putter around in down-at-heel slippers?  Golly gee, are we in great hands!

Update from Thomas Lifson.  Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine reminds us:

Kimba has made headlines before for all the wrong things.

Wood was dubbed the "Love Judge" in 1995 when the soon-to-be ex-wife of a multimillionaire Wall Street financier found his diary, which was filled with passionate prose about his trysts with the jurist.

Moneyman Frank Richardson gushed about the time he spent with Wood, describing her as "absolutely wonderful, very intelligent, a complete woman and able to give love wonderfully and freely."

The illicit romance began in the spring of that year with dinners at ritzy restaurants and weekend getaways at Wood's country home. At the time, Kimba was married to a Time magazine columnist but the two were about to divorce.

That's where the sneering at Cohen's clients is coming from.

It's a safe bet that Judge Kimba Wood might  harbor some resentment toward Republicans.  And a Clinton nominee should not be overseeing a case involving his political opponents.  Except that's how Team Coup keeps doing things.

And, from Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator:

Wood was appointed to the bench by... Ronald Reagan.  But it was Bill and Hillary Clinton who pressed to make her Attorney General.  And Hillary Clinton personally interviewed Wood for the job.  One of the amusing sidelights is that the Clintons were embarrassed when they learned that in 1966, when she was a student in London, Wood had – stop laughing! – "on a lark... signed up for the bunny trainee program for the Playboy Club there.  She told [Clinton] she quit after five days, before actually being employed by the club or drawing a paycheck."  When this came out Wood was immediately dubbed "The Love Judge."

This news of Wood's involvement comes on top of the raid that created the case in the first place.  The Justice Department – in the person of Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein – authorized the raid on the office, home, and hotel room of Donald Trump's personal lawyer.  That would be the very same Donald Trump who defeated one Hillary Clinton for president – the self-same Hillary Clinton who, according to the New York Times in February of 1993, played a role in getting then-President Clinton to nominate Judge Wood for Attorney General of the United States by personally interviewing Wood.

Anyway one wants to slice it, Judge Wood has a massive and vivid appearance of a conflict of interest.  Can you imagine the reverse?  President Hillary Clinton's personal attorney has her office raided, files are scooped up and the judge in the case is an ally of – a former President Donald Trump?

And, via Heavy.com:

She performed the non-denominational wedding ceremony of liberal financier George Soros to Tamiko Bolton in 2013.  Nancy Pelosi was among the guests, Page Six reported. ...

The New York Daily News, in 1995, said that Wood's ascendancy to the federal bench raised some eyebrows because "Wood had no criminal experience at the time D'Amato nominated her for the judgeship and, as a life-long Democrat, she could hardly be said to share D'Amato's views."

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona.  He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.