Judge Cannon presided over 'eerily similar' case involving defendant who didn't get the same breaks as Trump

U.S. District Court judge Aileen Cannon has already presided over a remarkably similar case to the Donald Trump classified documents trial, and her reactions to disruptive and defiant defendants have been markedly different.

The trial of Christopher Wilkins was one of the first in her brief career on the bench, and The Daily Beast reviewed hundreds of pages of trial transcripts and court filings and found "eerie parallels" to the former president's prosecution for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago -- but she was not nearly as accommodating in that previous trial.

"Like Trump, the event that landed Christopher Tavorris Wilkins in front of this federal judge started on a bad day in early November," wrote political investigations reporter Jose Pagliery. "In Wilkins’ case, it was the evening of Nov. 7, 2019, and he was sitting in a green chair inside a federal courtroom in Fort Lauderdale. Jurors had just read their verdict, declaring him guilty of transporting firearms illegally and intimidating a witness. As the jurors filed out of the room and Judge William Dimitrouleas thanked them for their service, Wilkins was enraged — so much so that he picked up his chair and threw it at the federal prosecutor across the room who was responsible for putting him away: John C. McMillan."

Wilkins harangued the prosecutor with profane and violent threats, which were recorded by surveillance cameras and a court reporter's audio, and the cameras were still rolling when court deputies tackled him to the ground.

"Fast-forward more than a year later, and Wilkins found himself before Judge Cannon, facing new charges of assault and threatening to murder a United States attorney," Pagliery wrote. "Having already cycled through one defense lawyer — yet another Trump similarity — Wilkins was now at a pretrial hearing trying to dump his second one. His aggressive comments might sound awfully familiar."

Wilkins was defiant as he appeared before the judge, insisting the audio and video had been altered and threatening to "sabotage the trial" by introducing his conspiracy theories as evidence, and when the trial began a week later Cannon issued a stern warning that any "disruptive behavior" would get him removed from the courtroom to watch the rest of his trial over Zoom.

The two-day trial concluded without any outbursts from Wilkins, and he was convicted Jan. 20, 2022, and is now serving two decades in prison in central Florida.

Trump, on the other hand, has so far escaped sanctions for lobbing threats and insults against the "Department of Injustice" and "deranged" special counsel Jack Smith, and Cannon set a May 2024 trial date five months later than prosecutors had requested, which gives the former president a chance to compete in all the key Republican primary state races.

Cannon also issued an eyebrow-raising judicial order this week that revealed the existence of another federal grand jury investigation, and she struck two sealed motions filed by Smith's office related to that ongoing investigation.