'Overwhelmed': Lawyers experienced with Judge Cannon say she’s not equipped for Trump case

07 June 2024

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to her lifetime position by former President Donald Trump during his final months in office, is in over her head, according to attorneys who have had cases heard in her courtroom.

In a recent CNN report, several lawyers speaking anonymously — given that they don't want to jeopardize their positions by speaking about a sitting judge where they have cases heard — said that Cannon is too inexperienced to preside over a case as complicated as Trump's. They pointed to Cannon having presided over just a "handful" of criminal cases in the "sleepy" town of Fort Pierce in the Southern District of Florida as evidence that she's "indecisive" and more "form over substance."

"She just seems overwhelmed by the process," one attorney said.

When Trump's lawyers challenged the Department of Justice's 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago in its investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents, Cannon notably decided to appoint a "special master" (an unrelated third party) to review the DOJ's decision to execute the warrant. That decision was overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals panel, which is considered one of the more conservative judicial circuits in the country. The panel consisted of three Republican-appointed judges.

"We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant," the judges wrote at the time. "Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so."

Just a few months after that, Cannon was randomly selected to preside over the classified documents case. She has since scuttled the initial trial date of May 20, citing a backlog of pre-trial motions she has yet to rule on that she says may take her until late July. This has led to critics accusing her of "slow-walking" the trial in order to help the former president avoid having to go trial before the November election.

Another defense attorney told CNN that Cannon was typically a tough sentencer and tended to hold defense attorneys to a much higher standard than the prosecution. They added that the contrast between how she treats Trump vs. other criminal defendants in her courtroom is noteworthy.

"She’s certainly not sympathetic to most defendants, and she’s certainly playing a different game with the current defendant before her," the attorney said.

The case Cannon is overseeing is considered to be DOJ special counsel Jack Smith's strongest case against the former president between the two federal indictments he's brought, given the wealth of evidence collected since 2022. He has indicted Trump on 37 felony counts of mishandling classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago.

Click here to read CNN's report in full.

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