US District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee overseeing the former president’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in South Florida, last week pushed back a conference to meet with prosecutors until February and was also denied. the request from special counsel Jack Smith, a “one-two punch” that Jose Pagliery of The Daily Beast warned “created chaos that could lead to his other legal battles before the 2024 election.”
Cannon in his order denied Smith’s request to schedule a CIPA Section 5 hearing on what classified materials Trump plans to use in the trial, noting that he would set all remaining deadlines. in March 2024, when Trump’s election subversion attempt is scheduled to begin in Washington, DC
“Not scheduling a CIPA section 5 hearing, as is customary, is a clear sign that he is in the bag for Trump as he was when he issued his terrible decisions before test (both reinstated in scathing language by the conservative 11th Circuit),” Tweet former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann. “What a job he is.”
Pagliery compared Cannon’s keeping the now-scheduled May 2024 trial date in Florida to “booking a restaurant reservation that you don’t want to keep,” citing former CIA attorney Brian Greer, who said the judge’s selection effectively threw out the judges who presided over the former. -presidential cases in Washington, DC, Atlanta, and New York “in limbo.”
“Another judge can schedule something for May but doesn’t want to, because it’s possible that the trial will still go to May. If you’re a cynic—and I’m not—you can say that he did it on purpose,” said Greer.
“So while these three other judges are figuring out how to keep their cases moving toward trial, they’re competing with a bad case in South Florida — one that could claim a big block of time to figure out unprecedented constitutional issues,” Pagliery wrote. “That’s especially true because the case is handled by a judge who has less experience handling trials than the average municipal traffic court administrator,” highlighted how a New York Times analysis determined that only four of the 224 criminal cases assigned to Cannon since his assumption. the 2020 position is tested. The four cases took only 14 days of trial.
Some legal experts have chalked up Cannon’s latest antics to more than a lack of experience.
“He is a perfect member of the Trump defense team,” Tweet Norman J. Ornstein, senior fellow emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute. “Aileen Cannon is completely unfit for the bench. Someone should introduce an impeachment resolution against her. It goes anywhere but highlights her terrible behavior.”
Pagliery noted that in the past “Cannon stopped the FBI from sorting through Top Secret records obtained by special agents at his Florida mansion – until an appeals court overturned him with great force. the former president —and got caught. Then, in August, he questioned the Justice Department’s continued use of a secret grand jury far outside his district—which fully positioned Trump’s lawyers to prosecute the ‘abuse’ of it seems like a similar investigation in Washington.”
