Aileen Cannon: The judge who holds Trump’s fate in his hands was appointed by him

A Florida district judge appointed to oversee Donald Trump’s secret documents case has faced criticism due to a series of controversial rulings and the fact that it was Trump himself who elevated her to the bench.

Aileen Cannon is a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, overseeing the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice against Trump, who was charged with illegally possessing secret documents at his Florida estate after leaving the White House in January 2021, and with obstructing efforts US government to recover them.

The indictment says Trump tried to hide boxes of secret documents after subpoenaing a grand jury that ordered them returned. Trump adviser Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira were also indicted and also asked for the charges against them to be dismissed. All men pleaded not guilty.

If the former president is convicted, Cannon will be tasked with sentencing the same man who nominated her to the position.

Trump, in his angry statements and posts on Truth Social, insisted that he was an “innocent man”, maintaining that he was the victim of “rabid wolves” and the “weaponization” of the justice system by the “corrupt” Biden administration, even though the indictment revealed photos of boxes with nudes stacked high in the glittering ballrooms and bathrooms of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

Angela Noble, the court’s chief clerk, insisted that “normal procedures were followed” in assigning Cannon to the case.

But Cannon has come under fire for issuing rulings widely seen in Trump’s favor during the investigation into secret documents.

After the FBI issued a search warrant in August 2022 to enter Mar-a-Lago and search for secret documents, Trump’s lawyers filed a complaint, arguing that the search was illegal and unconstitutional.

Cannon then issued an order prohibiting the U.S. government from “further reviewing or using any materials” confiscated at Mar-a-Lago “for investigative purposes.”

The ruling raised concern in legal circles as an unprecedented case of a federal judge assuming the power to halt an investigation into a suspect before an indictment was filed. Her ruling was later overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

In 2022, Cannon also supported Trump’s request to appoint an independent special examiner to review the documents before the Justice Department examines them, a move that Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, called “deeply flawed.”

After appointing special master Raymond Deari, Cannon then scrapped a number of his procedural proposals and sided with Trump’s lawyers on several key issues.

The appeals court ruled that Cannon “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction” and ordered her to withdraw from the case.

Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern called the decision “one of the most humiliating appellate skirmishes in recent history, a complete demolition of literally every action Cannon has taken since the beginning of the case,” also calling the judge “corrupt mediocrity.” He also suggested that Trump’s “total lack of principle” and “apparent inability to feel shame” would likely benefit him.

On March 14, Trump joined his lawyers in federal court in Florida for a hearing on his attempts to dismiss criminal charges in a classified documents case.

In two motions to dismiss the case, the former president’s lawyers argued that the espionage-era charges against him were unconstitutionally “vague” and that the Presidential Records Act shielded him from prosecution.

Trump’s attorneys argued in a lawsuit that Trump had “virtually unreviewable” authority to mark presidential records as personal and that the National Archives and the U.S. Department of Justice were not authorized to retrieve the documents, which said Trump had “virtually unreviewable discretion” to mark the records “personal” before he left the White House.

On March 14, Cannon suggested that these arguments were “premature.”

The former president “never” considered the files personal, prosecutor Jay Bratt told the judge.

“Not only is it premature, but it never happened,” Bratt said. “It doesn’t say, ‘I can show you this because it’s personal.’ …In fact, he claims the opposite.”

Prosecutors from the special counsel’s office have previously argued in court documents that the documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago are “undisputedly presidential in nature” and that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) would still apply to any classified information discovered at his residence. The former president is not accused of violating the PRA.

During the March hearing, Cannon seemed skeptical of Trump’s attack on the Espionage Act, as well as his attempt to use the PRA as a shield. But she also suggested that some of Trump’s arguments might be noteworthy when it comes time for jury instructions, asking that each side consider Trump’s PRA-based argument.

In response to her motion, Smith argued that her interpretation of the legal premise was “erroneous.”

However, in early April, Cannon denied a motion to dismiss the case under the PRA. Cannon noted at the time that the indictment “contains no reference to the Presidential Records Act” and that it “does not constitute pretrial grounds for dismissal.”

However, Cannon also denied Smith’s request for final jury instructions and defended her jury instructions form, calling Smith’s request “unprecedented and unfair.”

She argued that her suggested jury instructions should not be “misconstrued as a declaration of a definitive definition of any material element or an asserted defense in the case” and represent only “a genuine attempt… to better understand the competing positions of the parties and the questions that need to be asked “. sent to the jury.”

In mid-June, it was reported that Cannon had rejected private requests from two federal judges to remove herself from the case after she was assigned to it last year.

Two more experienced South Florida judges told Cannon it would be best if she turned the case over to one of her colleagues, but she ultimately ignored that suggestion and opted to continue to preside over the proceedings, he claims. New York Times.

The judges, including Cecilia Altonago, chief judge of the Southern District of Florida, turned to Cannon after she was assigned the case last June. Cannon’s assignment raised concerns about her limited trial experience and how she previously intervened in the Justice Department investigation that ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.

Lawyers working in the Southern District of Florida said Cannon violated the general practice of delegating certain pretrial document requests to a judge, according to Times. In this case, that would be Judge Bruce Reinhart, who reports to Cannon but has more experience. Reinhart agreed to an FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in 2022 to recover secret documents from Trump’s residence and private club.

Since then, Cannon has appeared combative with prosecutors, slow to move forward with pretrial motions and put the trial on hold even as both sides indicated they might be ready to start proceedings this summer.

Cannon is of Cuban-American descent and was born in Cali, Colombia in 1981. She was raised in Miami, where she attended Ransom Everglades School, then Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and then the University of Michigan Law School.

For a year after graduation, she worked as a clerk for an appellate judge in Iowa, then from 2009 to 2012 she worked at the Gibson Dunn law firm in Washington, D.C., and then as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida based in Fort Pierce, from 2013 to 2020 .

After being nominated by Trump, she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2020, at the end of his one-year administration, as a federal judge.

Her appointment to the judgeship came just 12 years after she qualified to practice law, which is the minimum experience required of candidates by the American Bar Association.

Cannon is a registered Republican, a member of the conservative Federalist Society since 2005, and reportedly donated $100 to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ 2018 re-election campaign.