In June 2023, Aileen M Cannon, a district judge, was given the responsibility of adjudicating a case concerning classified documents of former United States president, Donald Trump. It was reported that two of her seniors from the federal court in Florida suggested that she should delegate the case to someone else as per the information received from two insiders.
These prominent judges, among them the lead judge of southern district of Florida, Cecilia M Altonaga, recommended to Cannon that the case might be better handled by another jurist. Nevertheless, Cannon, initially assigned by Trump, was adamant in her decision to preside over the case, disregarding the advice from her colleagues.
The commitment of Cannon, whose trial experience is comparatively limited and who had previously interfered in a way that benefited Trump in the criminal investigation leading to his charge, which was subsequently overturned by a conservative-leaning appeals court panel, raised many eyebrows.
Her peers’ undisclosed attempts to persuade her to relinquish the case adds further complexity to the mounting criticism surrounding her management of the case. Cannon has deviated, as pointed out by lawyers in the field, from the commonplace practice of federal judges in the southern district of Florida, who generally delegate pretrial motions to a magistrate, in this instance Judge Bruce E. Reinhart, who despite being her junior, has considerably more experience.
Reinhart authorised an FBI warrant for a search of Trump’s club and residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, in 2022, in relation to extremely confidential government files that Trump maintained after his presidential term.
Cannon has since been accused of showing bias against prosecutors, processing pretrial motions at a slow pace and delaying the trial indefinitely, refusing to set a commencement date, despite both the prosecution and defence’s readiness to proceed this summer.
Trump’s legal team has recommended postponing any trial until post-election, and her case management appears to be aiding them in this strategy. In the event of Trump regaining the presidency, he would have the power to request the department of justice to abandon the case.
Nonetheless, Cannon, being a Senate-confirmed, presidentially appointed judge with lifetime tenure and autonomous status, is not under the jurisdiction of her senior district court colleagues.
The manner in which Judge Cannon is managing the current case has been subject to severe examination, with critics implying that she might either be supporting Trump excessively or simply not capable of handling the case. It has been noted that her judicial colleagues have been working to convince her to relinquish control of the case early on. However, their attempts and its implications became well-known amongst other federal judges and people acquainted with them.
Neither Judge Cannon nor Altonaga responded directly to the attempts to contact them, including email communication via district court’s clerk, Angela E Noble, who mentioned in an email that their judges do not issue comments on ongoing court proceedings.
It is common place for inexperienced judges to seek guidance or mentorship from their senior peers as they navigate their new roles. Serving as the district’s chief, Altonaga also has an official administrative function within the federal judiciary of southern Florida.
However, in the final analysis, Cannon is not bound by the authority of her district court seniors. Being a judge accredited by the Senate and appointed by the President, she has lifetime tenure and independent ranking, allowing her to disregard any advisory comments, if she wishes.
Two individuals who discussed the attempts to coax her into releasing the case requested anonymity. Each person had been informed about these efforts by different federal judges in the southern district of Florida, including Altonaga.
Neither individual identified the second federal judge in Florida who attempted to reach out to Cannon. One person confirmed they tried to persuade Cannon to step aside, but did not elaborate on the content of the conversations between the two judges. The other person provided more insight.
The latter noted that each contact was made via telephone and the initial judge to initiate a call to Cannon apparently advised her that the case might be better handled by a judge located closer to Miami, the location of the district’s most active courthouse. The grand jury that indicted Trump was held in Miami, which also has a secure facility approved for dealing with highly confidential information that may be raised in pretrial proceedings or used as evidence in the case. However, Cannon is the only judge in the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, which is situated a two-hour drive north of Miami. Notably, at the time Cannon was assigned to the case, the Fort Pierce courthouse lacked a secure facility.
The issue arose when Judge Cannon retained the case, necessitating the construction of a security facility, known as a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), at a significant cost to taxpayers. Despite presenting this argument, it did not persuade Cannon to step down, resulting in a phone call from Altonaga. The chief judge, appointed by President George W. Bush, highlighted that it would be perceived negatively for Cannon to preside over the trial, considering the events during the criminal investigation leading to Trump’s indictment for illegally keeping national security documents and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, after his departure from office.
A search warrant was issued by Reinhart to the FBI in August 2022 to raid Mar-a-Lago in search of any undisclosed classified documents that Trump failed to hand over post-subpoena. The search resulted in the discovery of thousands of government documents that Trump had retained, in breach of the Presidential Records Act, which mandates the transfer of such documents to the National Archives upon leaving office. More than a hundred classified documents, some of which were of the highest level of restriction, were part of the recovered files.
Following the search, Trump took legal action against the government, arguing that the seized materials were his personal property. He requested the appointment of a special master to scrutinise the documents. Cannon unusually decided to resolve the matter herself rather than turning it over to Reinhart, which would have been the standard procedure.
Cannon’s decision, which she stated would be subject to her final ruling, barred investigators from accessing the evidence and commanded the appointment of a special master. Legal experts of diverse ideologies found this surprising, as Cannon interceded before any charges were brought, suggesting differential treatment of Trump due to his former president status.
Furthermore, Cannon asked the special master to evaluate the possibility of permanently withholding some retrieved files from investigators based on executive privilege, a notion that was broadly doubted given that it had never been successfully claimed in a criminal case. The decision was appealed by prosecutors to the 11th US circuit court of appeals in Atlanta. The appeal resulted in a rebuttal as a three-judge panel with two appointees from Trump reversed her decision, ruling that she had no legal jurisdiction to intervene from the outset.
The execution of a search warrant at a previous president’s home is indeed out of the ordinary, however, this does not influence our legislative conclusion, nor does it grant the judiciary the permission to intervene in an ongoing inquiry, the committee penned.
[Classified documents pending trial to be reviewed in a dedicated facility at Mar-a-Lago, requested Trump]
A statute that allows courts to intervene in criminal inquiries upholds without consideration of the investigation’s subject, making the introduction of an exclusive exemption unlikely, as it contradicts the fundamental principle that the application of our laws is ‘for all, irrespective of number, wealth or title’.
Trump’s legal team sought the assistance of the US highest court, but despite their appeal efforts, the case was not considered. In December 2022, Cannon rejected Trump’s legal action.
Following a six-month duration, Miami’s grand jury indicted Trump, providing a comprehensive depiction of how he clandestinely housed extremely classified documents in a restroom and on a platform at Mar-a-Lago, and incessantly instructed his advisers and legal team to deter the justice department and National Archives’ attempts to reclaim them.
As per the district’s established procedures, the clerk stated that the most recent case was entered into a system designed to randomly allocate it to any one of a few judges situated in the West Palm Beach division – covering Mar-a-Lago, or either of its two adjacent divisions, Fort Pierce, and Fort Lauderdale. Eventually, the case was assigned to Cannon.