Aileen Cannon: Portrait of a Judge in the Fractured Double Reality of American Justice

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

60% : "[It] is uncontested, of course, that no former executive or former vice president had ever been - had ever been - been faced with or exposed to criminal liability for retaining personal or presidential records," Cannon said to Jay Bratt, one of Smith's lead prosecutors.
47% : Although her order on jury instructions came early in the process, it appears Cannon is attempting to flesh out the government's case given the nebulous language in the Espionage Act and untested nature of the Public Records Act.
41% : Following the FBI's armed raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Trump immediately filed a lawsuit seeking a so-called "special master" to replace government investigators in reviewing the roughly 13,000 pieces of evidence seized by the FBI, a move the DOJ opposed.
40% : A few days after Cannon received the case, Barbara McQuade, an Obama-appointed assistant U.S. attorney and cable news legal analyst, told the Washington Post, "Judge Cannon could delay the case at the request of Trump, either to provide time to adequately prepare for trial or to avoid interfering with his presidential campaign.
40% : During a March 14 hearing in Fort Pierce, Cannon and the defense repeatedly raised the question of "arbitrary enforcement" of the Espionage Act.
39% : Defense counsel also identified coordination between the White House and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who charged Trump and several others in a broad RICO indictment last summer.
36% : [Trump's] inability to examine the seized materials to date; the power imbalance between the parties; the importance of maintaining institutional trust; and the interest in ensuring the integrity of an orderly process amidst swirling allegations of bias and media leaks," Cannon wrote in her September 5, 2022, order.Noting how information related to the raid was appearing in the media, Cannon also warned the government about "irreparable harm" to Trump if investigators continued to leak details to reporters, something Cannon forced one of the lead prosecutors to admit during a hearing on the lawsuit.
36% : Cannon asked Bratt if it was "reasonably foreseeable" for Trump to expect to avoid prosecution given the statute's history and his purview as the "original classification authority" over presidential papers.
34% : During a March 14 hearing, she pointedly forced the government to admit that no former president or vice president has ever been prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
30% : Contrary to what her critics claim, Cannon has issued some pretrial rulings that went against Trump and his co-defendants.
25% : They argued that Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is handling Smith's other case against Trump in Washington, D.C., should recuse herself for repeatedly expressing anti-Trump bias while presiding over Jan. 6 Capitol protest cases.
24% : She quickly dismissed Trump's argument that the vagueness of the Espionage Act warranted a dismissal of the case.
23% : "New evidence ... reveals that politically motivated operatives in the Biden Administration and the National Archives and Records Administration began this crusade against President Trump in 2021," the pair wrote in a 68-page motion to compel release of the evidence.
21% : Since being assigned the case in June 2023, Cannon has been widely attacked by Trump's critics, who demand that she recuse herself from the case for a variety of reasons including a perceived conflict, based on the fact she was appointed by Trump in 2020 and on her inexperience on the bench.
21% : But if she moves forward, explosive revelations about how top federal agencies conspired to take down Donald Trump could be made public and contradict claims that the DOJ worked "independently" of the White House.
20% : In another she said, "Donald Trump has been disqualified long ago, and he's marked for assassination.
19% : When Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a sprawling indictment against Trump that included 32 counts of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly taking national defense records when he left office, he not only put the 43-year-old judge in the spotlight - he also put her in the crosshairs.
4% : Bratt further clarified that the alleged crime took place the moment Trump left office, prompting Cannon to again suggest different treatment between Trump and Biden.

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