The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified-documents trial has faced renewed calls to recuse herself from the case after she reprimanded Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team for a word count on their legal filings.
Judge Aileen Cannon was appointed to the bench in 2018 by the former president. She has been criticized by legal experts for her response to federal prosecutors urging her not to be “manipulated” by Trump into delaying the federal trial, which is set to begin in May 2024. The frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges in connection to the classified documents case and has repeatedly called the trial a political witch hunt.
Legal experts have told Newsweek that they doubt Cannon will be removed or recuse herself from the trial this far into the proceedings.
At this point she could cry out “Hail our Fuhrer, Trump!” and do a Nazi salute, and it still wouldn’t be enough to remove her. Oversight is fucked in the judiciary.
Actually, she answers to the 11th Circuit, and she’s already been reprimanded by them twice. If Jack Smith brings a viable example of bias before them one more time, it’s third strike, and she’s out.
The problem is, many of her actions are completely within the scope of her duties, and she’s basically doing “death by 1000 cuts.” Hopefully Smith can make a cogent case for her removal soon.
ETA: at least one (maybe both) of those reprimands gave her the benefit of the doubt for being so new at adjudication. I don’t imagine the 11th Circuit will be so generous again.
Thank you, I was under the impression that she was helping baby hands and there were no consequences for what she was doing. That’s good to know, I’ll look up the specifics later, unless you have an article in mind you could link me to.
I listen to the Legal AF podcast (irritating side comments, great and pretty accurate legal analysis, approachable even for an ignorant boomer) to stay abreast of the goings on. I haven’t listened in the last few days, because I simply need a break, but I would guess they’ve already covered these new developments.
Legal AF’s clickbait episode titles kill me, but the information is top notch.
Cleanup on Aisle 45 and Jack are both excellent sources of accurate information as well.
Daily Beans is also worth listening to.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
If Jack Smith brings a viable example of bias before them one more time, it’s third strike, and she’s out.
This is the first time I’ve heard of this.
IANAL. I heard it from lawyers on the Legal AF podcast. Take that for what you will.
Unrelated to the topic, but I really think we should change the acronym to just “NAL”. The “IA” is completely unnecessary and I really just can’t see anything other than “I anal”.
I always expect it’s I❤️ANAL and the heart didn’t render.
It can be two things
I was thinking “INAL” (“I’m not a lawyer”), but I like “NAL” even better.
I’m skeptical of this but would love to be surprised.
What are the chances that she randomly draws Trump’s cases twice. Of all people? It’s shady as fuck.
And this right here is why it matters which president we vote for. Because they decide if we get judges like Aileen Cannon.
Would this cause a mistrial? I have no idea.
No clue. My guess is since they haven’t even gotten to the official trial (set for March), she’d be swapped out for one of her counterparts, or the 11th Circuit would hear the case instead.
ETA: at least one (maybe both) of those reprimands gave her the benefit of the doubt for being so new at adjudication. I don’t imagine the 11th Circuit will be so generous again.
I doubt the 11th Circuit will do anything except wring their hands.
I heard that part from practicing lawyers with decades of experience, so unless you’re a lawyer, I’ll go with their assessment.
I mean, not that I blame you for going with their word over mine, but let’s come back a few months from now and see how things shake out. I’d love to be wrong.
Believe me, I understand the cynicism. Listening to them is the only thing that has given me hope in these proceedings.
I thought one decision on a previous case was overruled for the judge but what were the other decisions she’s been reprimanded for? Not trying to sound antagonist just I only heard of a single instance a higher court impacting her and was a previous case, the only thing that comes up for her with reprimand was when she reprimanded Jack Smith, but it was recent so that’s probably why. Mean I do hope she was, if anyone was more pronounced for carrying water for Trump they’d have pole indents in their shoulders from the work.
The only 11th Circuit adverse ruling I’ve found for this case is from her gaffe in Sept. 2022. It’s possible there’s been another smaller one that media outlets just ignored, but I don’t know.
The other definite instance was from a different case in June 2023, and the 11th circuit ruled that what she did was a grave “structural error,” which I gather is significantly bad.
So they might be different cases, but going before them again and having your (at best) inexperience on display again is not a good look for a judge handling a case so novel and important to the entire country.
Actually, oversight is fucked everywhere (unless you’re poor)
Trump appointed her. Idk why she gets a say in anything regarding his case. It seems there’s still no adults handling this child.
Trump is getting his delay one way or another. Cannon is so deep in his pocket that even in her worse-case scenario, her recusal or removal, would start everything over at 0.
The judge that he put into a local district in his lame duck period? Surely legal proceedings wouldn’t let that judge rule on his case, the person that gave her a lifelong judge position. Nah…
Legal system so big on ethics.
Very ethical slave catchers.
I think Special Counsel is playing the long game with that inexperienced hack.
Jack Smith does not want to remove Cannon. Or he shouldn’t at least. Not at this point, anyway.
By far, the best possible outcome is still for Jack Smith to convict Donald Trump in Aileen Cannon’s Florida courtroom. As long as Cannon doesn’t start conducting the trial in a way that actually prevents Smith from winning that conviction, keeping her in place is in everybody’s best interest.
This morning’s (11/07/'23) headlines are all about how Trump verbally attacked the judge in his fraud trial in New York yesterday. Trump has repeatedly accused Judge Engoron of being partisan and biased, to the press and now in his sworn testimony. MAGA eats that shit up. The more Trump looks like a victim to them, the more riled up they get in his defense.
It seems to me that “The Case of the Stolen Nuclear Secrets” is going to be much simpler and easier for people to understand than “The Case of Strategically Shifting the Valuation of Heavily Leveraged Real Estate Properties for Various Tax and Loan Purposes.” Considering even just the evidence that has already been made public in this case (photos of boxes of classified documents haphazardly stacked in a spare bathroom; audio recordings of Trump bragging that he shouldn’t be sharing a classified brief he’d illegally kept) the chances of a conviction are strong.
If Trump gets convicted by a jury in a Florida courtroom run by so seemingly biased a judge as Cannon, it’s going to be a lot harder for him to claim it’s all rigged against him by the Democrats. It’s going to be a whole lot harder to work that conviction into the whole victimhood narrative that Trump is currently thriving on.
The opinions of the public matter much less than getting an unbiased trial, do they not?
If Trump gets out of his crimes because of a biased judge, what does the opinion of the uninformed masses matter?
As long as Cannon doesn’t start conducting the trial in a way that actually prevents Smith from winning that conviction, keeping her in place is in everybody’s best interest.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified-documents trial has faced renewed calls to recuse herself from the case after she reprimanded Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team for a word count on their legal filings.
The frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges in connection to the classified documents case and has repeatedly called the trial a political witch hunt.
Stephen E. Smith, legal professor at Santa Clara University in California, added that the chances of the Department of Justice seeking Cannon’s removal is “unlikely to the point of wholly unlikely.”
Cannon said in a recent hearing that she was open to moving the classified documents trial as the timing of the other criminal investigations involving Trump may complicate the current schedule.
There was also the added complexity of establishing secure rooms in which both prosecutors and defense lawyers can review the highly sensitive documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
In response, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman posted on X: "Biased or not, Cannon simply doesn’t have game; and she masks it with prickly remonstrations of the government.
The original article contains 939 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
If Jack Smith wanted to get rid of her, he knows how to do it.
I didn’t realize a prosecutor could just get the judge changed by asking. Apparently in the US when you get a lifelong position you’re assumed to be squeeky clean and will rule without prejudice. Mean yes if it’s obvious but we see how well Cannon has been working for Trump.
Delay? Oh why not, let’s make it four, four what? Just fill in the time period defense attorney and we’ll resume then. Objection? Let’s hold today’s proceedings in case I missed a reason why I can dismiss the case. She’s just skirting her duties to make sure it doesn’t look worse than it can to try and keep her job. Yes that’s a hyperbole but she may as well just tell the defense what she needs to hear to rule in her favour.
All Smith has to do is go to a superior court and make a case for bias. Then she’ll be removed and another judge will be assigned. He doesn’t, for what reason I do not know. But, I trust him to bring it home.
I’m sure she is biased, but judges don’t recuse or get removed for this kind of thing. Judges are allowed to criticize prosecutors.
It’s the same as the criticism of the judge telling Trump’s lawyers to control him and make him answer questions in the fraud case today. It’s just part of what judges do. The other judges who would do the removing know that better than most.
judges get to criticize people, sure. But “your briefs are too long” are not one of them. Unless they legitimately are word salad with no substance.
Cannon doesn’t get to “TL/DR” and Smith’s team is very unlikely to do the word salad thing. That’s more of Trump’s specialty.
Actually, she does. Regardless of her motives, I seriously doubt that asking the prosecution to keep their briefs…brief…would be considered grounds for recusal. Same with setting her own schedule for the trial, even if that schedule is ridiculously delayed and clearly favors Trump.
And I’m not saying this in her defense. She should be removed. The problem is that she’s going the “death by a thousand paper cuts” route, and doing nothing that would be considered technically appealable. She may be flouting the rules, but she’s staying within them, even if only by millimeters.
