Missouri newspaper blasts federal judge for favoring 'loyalty to Trump' over 'loyalty to the law'

04 October 2022

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon has received a great deal of criticism for the decisions she has made in response to the federal investigation of the government documents that former President Donald Trump was storing at his Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, Florida — including classified documents that FBI agents confiscated when they executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, August 8. Some of that criticism of Cannon has come from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial board.

In a scathing editorial published on October 2, the board argues that Cannon, a Trump appointee, has made one bad decision after another where the former president is concerned.

“First, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Donald Trump appointee, granted the former president’s request for a ‘special master’ to review documents he took from the White House, a baffling decision derided by legal experts across the political spectrum,” the Post-Dispatch’s editorial board writes. “Worse, Cannon ruled that the FBI couldn’t have access to classified documents, thwarting a probe with national-security implications — another head-scratching stance that an appeals court later overturned in blistering language. Then, last week, Cannon overruled the special master that she herself appointed, saying Trump’s lawyers don’t have to provide evidence of his baseless claim that the FBI ‘planted’ documents in his home.”

The board continues, “It has become glaringly obvious that this judge shares Trump’s corruptly transactional approach to politics. She shouldn’t preside in this case.”

During speeches, Trump not only boasts about appointing three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court — Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — but also, about all of the judges he appointed to the lower federal courts during his four years in the White House. One of them was Cannon, who has been active in the right-wing Federalist Society.

“Even most Trump-appointed judges have admirably upheld their duty to unbiased interpretation of the law,” the Post-Dispatch’s editorial board writes. “In fact, Trump appointed two of the three-judge appellate panel that found Cannon ‘abused (her) discretion’ in suspending the FBI’s probe of the documents. But Cannon wasn’t done carrying Trump’s water. On Thursday, she ruled that Trump could ignore a decision from the special master — whom she appointed at Trump’s request — that would have required Trump’s lawyers to either prove his false claim that the FBI planted documents, or quit claiming it.”

The board continues, “In other words, said Cannon, Trump is free to continue muddying the case with innuendo without having to back it up…. This is an unusual case in that Cannon’s apparent bias may have jeopardized national security in her attempt to stall the FBI’s investigation into the contents of the classified documents. The Justice Department should ask Cannon to recuse herself, and if she refuses, it should appeal for reassignment of the case. This is too important to leave on the docket of someone whose loyalty is clearly to Trump instead of the law.”

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