Former Trump Attorney: Judge Aileen Cannon Will Be Removed From the Case Due to Incompetence

Aileen Cannon was appointed to the bench in 2020 by Trump.
The judge is handling the classified documents case against the former POTUS.

Prosecutors recently demanded she issue a ruling on a motion.

A former Trump attorney warned she could find herself removed from the case.

(NewsReady.com) – Federal Judge Aileen Cannon didn’t have much experience when former President Donald Trump nominated her to a lifetime appointment, which the Senate approved. Now, she’s overseeing one of the cases against the man who nominated her. One of Trump’s former attorneys believes she could be removed from the case.

Controversial Instructions

Trump is facing multiple felonies for his handling of classified documents post-presidency. Prosecutors allege he refused to return classified material after the National Archives asked for it. After months of back and forth, federal authorities raided his home and office.

Cannon recently instructed Special Council Jack Smith and the defense to write mock jury instructions regarding Trump’s defense team’s claims that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to declare that the classified documents he refused to return were his personal property, even though those documents allegedly included highly sensitive military secrets and other information about the country.

National security experts, legal experts, and others contend that is a gross misinterpretation of the law. Smith responded to Cannon’s request by pushing back on her openness to the defense. He accused her of pursuing a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” that the Presidential Records Act overrides Section 793 of the Espionage Act. He said the Records Act has nothing to do with the case at all and “would distort the trial.”

Smith urged her to rule on the issue quickly so that he could appeal her decision to a higher court, if necessary.

Former Trump Attorney Issues Warning

On April 3, former Trump attorney Ty Cobb told CNN’s Erin Burnett that Cannon’s bias toward Trump is obvious. The judge has failed to rule on multiple filings, pushed the trial back from its original May start date but hasn’t rescheduled, and appears to have ruled against prosecutors multiple times.

Burnett asked Cobb why he thought that the judge was trying to stall the case. Trump’s former attorney said that he knows many media commentators have “tried to be polite about Judge Cannon’s missteps” and suggested they could be the result of her inexperience. However, he said he thinks “the evidence of her bias is pretty palpable” at this point.

Cobb said it was “remarkable” that Cannon has failed to even set a trial date. “Her delays here are extraordinary,” Cobb exclaimed. He said he thinks Smith is going to ask that she be removed from the case.

The attorney went on to say that Smith’s filing made it clear Cannon has to issue a ruling soon and if she doesn’t, Smith’s team will almost certainly go to the 11th Circuit, and that court “will likely take her off the case.”