'Judge' Aileen Cannon Needs to Be Removed From the Mar-a-Lago Stolen National Security Documents Case

‘America Rises’ Post #21: Saturday, November 4th, 2023

On November 12^th, just nine days after Trump lost the 2020 election, Aileen Cannon—who was nominated by Trump for a lifetime federal judgeship in May of 2020—was confirmed by the senate. Cannon, who had little to no experience as a lawyer before being nominated by Trump, is also a Federalist Society Member (like all of Trump’s judicial appointments). A 2007 graduate from the University of Michigan Law School, Cannon was appointed to the bench only 12 years after she was first admitted to practice law; which, according to the American Bar Association, is the bare minimum level of experience that such nominees should have.

Cannon was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and currently sits at Fort Pierce, about an hour’s drive north of Trump’s Mar-a-lago residence. So the judge Trump appointed directly after losing the 2020 election was placed in the exact location that Trump’s stolen national security documents case is being tried. By equally impressive coincidence, Cannon was “randomly assigned” to Trump’s case out of 15 total Judges in her District it could have gone to. If this doesn’t strike you as a little too coincidental, I tend to question either your own capacity for impartiality with respect to this case or your grasp of what undeniably meets even the most peripheral standards of a conflict of interest.

Traditionally, judges have only been expected to recuse themselves in cases either involving a family member or in which a financial conflict of interest exists. Evidently the reason there is no expectation for a judge to recuse themselves because they were appointed by a defendant is because this is the first time a former President (the only position in our federal government with the authority to appoint judges) has ever faced indictment on federal charges. Even setting this aside, however, there is an incredibly strong case to be made for Judge Cannon’s recusal or removal from this case.