Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump nominee for the federal judiciary currently handling the criminal case against the ex-president related to his handling of government documents from his time in office, isn’t making a lot of fans.
A recent point of contention was her refusal to go ahead and establish certain scheduling related to the hashing out of the utilization of classified details at the eventual trial. She’s planning on dealing with that scheduling in March of next year… just a couple months before the previously established scheduling for the actual trial, scheduling that it seems unlikely will actually be fulfilled.
“She is a full fledged member of the Trump defense team. Aileen Cannon is utterly unfit for the bench. Someone should introduce an impeachment resolution against her. It will go nowhere but will highlight her outrageous conduct,” legal scholar Norman Ornstein from the American Enterprise Institute said Thursday on X, the platform formerly called Twitter. Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann argued that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the documents case, “has to be” considering the pursuit of Cannon’s removal from the case. In general, Trump himself has often been accused of courtroom tactics that amount to a delay strategy, and Cannon’s behavior could mirror and advance any such ambitions.
Elsewhere in court, Trump has been — for now — freed from a gag order in his New York fraud case brought by state Attorney General Letitia James. The order was originally imposed by the trial judge in response to Trump speaking publicly against a judicial clerk serving in the judge’s courtroom. Trump’s lawyers have also raised complaints about this individual, leading the judge — Arthur Engoron — to wonder whether the consistent nature of it all was rooted in sexism. He rejected any notion the defense’s entitlements in court effectively overruled the privacy of written communications that the judge and clerk were sharing.
She is a full fledged member of the Trump defense team. Aileen Cannon is utterly unfit for the bench. Someone should introduce an impeachment resolution against her. It will go nowhere but will highlight her outrageous conduct. https://t.co/hx9w1BKFi2
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) November 17, 2023
