With some of the latest developments in the criminal case against ex-President Donald Trump alleging criminal misconduct in his handling of government documents from his time in office, attention is again turning to federal Judge Aileen Cannon. She’s the Trump nominee currently handling the case.
Cannon is directing that deadlines related to the hashing out of the utilization of classified details at trial will be set in… March of next year, just months before the currently scheduled trial, scheduling it seems unlikely will be fulfilled. Trump himself has often been accused of leaning on tactics in court that amount to a push for delay, and Cannon’s actions, in general, could mirror and advance such ambitions. Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, whose time in federal employ included a stint on the Mueller investigation, is arguing that Special Counsel Jack Smith must be plotting a push for Cannon’s removal from the case, though he included some caveats.
“Judge Cannon’s bias is showing over and over again. Smith has to be weighing whether, when, and how to seek her reversal by the Ct of Appeals and her removal,” Weissmann said on X (formerly called Twitter). “Not scheduling a CIPA section 5 hearing, which is routine, is a clear sign she is just as much in the bag for Trump as when she issued her horrendous pretrial rulings (both reversed in scathing language by the conservative 11th Circuit). What a piece of work is she.”
Cannon is the same judge who set up a special master — meaning court-appointed third party — for the handling of document-by-document disputes stemming from the FBI’s search of Trump’s Florida resort Mar-a-Lago in late 2022. (That search was part of what became this criminal case.) The special master arrangements eventually met a court-forced end before their natural conclusion, reversing Cannon’s high-profile decision. The Justice Department consistently argued throughout the process for the primacy of existing pathways for resolving disputes around the documents.
Not scheduling a CIPA section 5 hearing, which is routine, is a clear sign she is just as much in the bag for Trump as when she issued her horrendous pretrial rulings (both reversed in scathing language by the conservative 11th Circuit). What a piece of work is she.
— Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)🌻 (@AWeissmann_) November 16, 2023
