aileen cannon judge

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prolly some neglect

MERRI OK

SEE FAIL BENCH SLAPPED OVERTURN

FORUM SHOP RUSSIAGATE BS LAWFARE ARTL III QUINONES

see trump immunity scotus clarence (only)

gibson dunn

see trump judge

no merri

fedsoc 2005 mich law sch

GMU LEC dude ranch 2021 see calabresi

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Fun fact about Judge Aileen Cannon: She was confirmed by the Senate on Nov. 12, 2020, after Donald Trump had lost the election. McConnell, then the majority leader, confirmed a series of judges in lame duck session, which hadn't happened for an outgoing president in generations.

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? 9 26 an

Judge Cannon’s secrecy order just backfired on Trump’s allies

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HUH? AN 9 26

Appeals judges appeared leery of allowing President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice to revive its dead prosecution of Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday. James’ prosecution was dismissed under the argument that the top prosecutor pressing the case did not have a right to be leading the indictment.

But DOJ attorneys say Senior U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie "administered […] strong medicine" as a consequence of Lindsey Halligan's "unlawful" appointment, insisting a mere "error in the title" should not have led to dismissal of Letitia James' and James Comey's indictments in Virginia, reports Law and Crime.

Rather, Attorney General Henry Whitaker argued before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the three-judge panel should "respect" grand juries' decisions and revive fraud and false statement indictments against Trump's perceived enemies New York's attorney general James and the former FBI director Comey. Whitaker claimed Currie erroneously concluded in November that ex-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi "unlawfully appointed" Trump's former personal attorney Halligan as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.

“But attorneys for Comey and James countered that Halligan was little more than a private citizen when she was the only prosecutor to sign the indictments and present to the grand jury. Notably, that is how U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon described ex-special counsel Jack Smith when she dismissed his Mar-a-Lago case against Trump on Appointments Clause grounds,” reported Law and Crime.

"Mr. Smith is a private citizen exercising the full power of a United States Attorney, and with very little oversight or supervision," Cannon said, tossing out the president's willful retention of classified documents and conspiracy case as a remedy.

Judges were quick to use that argument in the dismissal of James’ indictment.

"How would you then distinguish United States v. Trump when Judge Cannon found that Mr. Smith, whatever his name was, wasn't lawfully appointed? What happens in this case? How would you distinguish it if Ms. Halligan's not lawfully appointed?" asked Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Henry F. Floyd, a Barack Obama appointee. “… The point is that she says it wasn't a lawful appointment.”

Whitaker found himself flailing as he tried to discern between the two identical dismissals.

“She did, Your Honor, but Judge Cannon there was faced with the appointment of a special counsel to which different appointment authorities apply. For example, in this case, we could have appointed Ms. Halligan to conduct these prosecutions under 28 U.S.C. 542 and 543, which were appointment authorities that the United States did not invoke in defending the Jack Smith appointment," Whitaker said.

"To put it bluntly, would have, could have, should have. That didn't happen," Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, also an Obama appointee, said, jumping in.

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an 7 26

A jurist appointed by President Donald Trump to protect him, Florida’s Judge Aileen Cannon, has been described as a “partisan hack” and blasted by House Democrats. Now she is facing a new challenge: Calls to release a report by former special counsel Jack Smith that she has worked to suppress.

“A public advocacy group is urging a federal court of appeals to use any means available and necessary to unseal the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith's final report on his criminal investigations into President Donald Trump,” wrote Law and Crime's Colin Kalmbacher on Tuesday. “Late last year, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, issued two orders related to the long-running dispute over the second volume.”

Kalmbacher added, “In the first order, Cannon denied efforts to intervene by the Knight First Amendment Institute and transparency-focused nonprofit American Oversight. In her second order, Cannon acknowledged ‘any former or current party’ may move ‘for leave to intervene.’”

While Trump has previously praised Cannon for doing everything in her power to keep Smith’s report from coming to light, the American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute argue that there is a public interest in knowing their contents. They are citing the Freedom of Information Act as proof that Cannon must disclose the report’s contents.

"Appellees urge this Court to bar American Oversight's intervention in the district court based on a fundamental misunderstanding of American Oversight's interest as a prospective intervenor," their brief argued. "Because it had no other recourse to vindicate its rights under FOIA, Appellant sought intervention in the below proceedings—which were governed by federal criminal statutes."

It added, “American Oversight's statutory rights do not govern the underlying criminal proceedings, nor has it asserted any interest related to ‘the prosecution or nonprosecution’ of the former defendants. American Oversight's interest is more akin to that of media organizations that seek and are granted intervention in criminal cases for access to judicial records… FOIA does not govern the underlying criminal proceedings but provides American Oversight with a federal right, implicated by the district court's order barring the release of Volume II, to seek non-exempt public records from the federal government.”

The Trump administration has taken a special interest in keeping Smith’s report under wraps. In May they went after Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, the former managing assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District, for allegedly trying to email the documents to her personal account.

“The defendant concealed her actions by saving electronic copies of the government records in question under the misleading files names ‘chocolate cake recipe’ and ‘bundt cake recipe’ before electronically transmitting those records to her personal email accounts,” Trump’s Justice Department alleged in May. “As to the DOJ report, the indictment further alleges the defendant acted knowing that her transmission of the record outside DOJ directly violated the court order and impaired the proper administration of the underlying criminal prosecution.

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AN 5 26

A judge appointed by President Donald Trump — and who has been repeatedly accused of ignoring proper legal procedure to make decisions in his favor — is now blocking the release of files in a case regarding some of the most serious criminal charges previously filed against him.

“In an opposition brief on Tuesday, Trump attorney Kendra Wharton tore into the Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight for persistent yet ‘meritless’ attempts to fast-track appeals,” reported Matt Naham from the legal news website Law and Crime. The “appeal” in question involves attempts by the pair of non-profits, which respectively focus on free speech rights and fighting government corruption, to prevent Judge Aileen Cannon from destroying Volume II of a criminal case involving Trump’s alleged stealing and misuse of classified state documents after his first term.

“In February, and after ignoring American Oversight and the Knight Institute's attempts to intervene in the closed criminal case for nearly a year, Cannon permanently blocked the DOJ from releasing Volume II,” Naham reported. “Prior to that ruling, the groups filed emergency appeals, fearing that Cannon would order Volume II's destruction. That did not happen, but the rush to prevent it has led to a messy appellate posture as to her denial of the groups' interventions.”

Defending the judge Trump appointed near the end of his first term, the president argued in a recent filing that the groups "should not be rewarded" with speedy relief. By contrast, the non-profits argued in their filing that “if anything” the "public's interest in prompt access to Volume II has […] intensified since January[.]"

They added, "The grounds the Court credited in granting expedition in January 2026 apply with equal or greater force now. The need for expedition does not diminish merely because a procedural prerequisite—consolidation—remains to be resolved. To the contrary: it is the absence of a ruling on consolidation that is now standing in the way of the expedited disposition this Court already ordered."

In their own filing, Trump’s legal team argued that “lacking any credible argument for expedition at this juncture in the proceedings, Appellants falsely assert that this Court has 'already determined' that good cause exists, and they wrongly accuse this Court of undue delay in declining to expedite the appeals, all while refusing to acknowledge that their own sequencing decisions and repeated missteps resulted in the very posture of which they now complain. At this point, Appellants' modus operandi is clear. They will continue to deflect, cause unnecessary motion practice, and cast aspersions against any judicial officer who does not deliver their desired outcome."

"The public interest in the Special Counsel's report is extraordinary, and the public right of access to the report requires timely access," Knight Institute senior counsel Scott Wilkens told Naham about this issue. He added that there is "no valid reason for further delay."

Writing in February for the legal news website Above The Law, Kathryn Rubino pointed out that Cannon has “showed her whole a—— as a partisan hack willing to do the bidding of Donald Trump.”

“She really upped her status as ‘favorite judge of the most aggressively red-hatted MAGA crowd’ when she dismissed the criminal case against Trump,” Rubino wrote. “Her theory — that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional — was… creative. So creative, in fact, that it flew directly into conflict with decades of precedent. But after Trump won the 2024 election, the DOJ dropped the appeal.”

The special prosecutor behind that case, Jack Smith, has refused to remain silent despite legal pressures to do so. Speaking at a private Washington DC event on April 20, Smith warned that “we have a Department of Justice today that targets people for criminal prosecution simply because the president doesn't like them…. We have a department that fails to investigate cases because they might uncover facts that are inconvenient narratives the president would like to press."

Similarly, last fall Smith spoke to a George Mason University audience and described how “my career has been about the rule of law, and I believe that today, it is under attack like in no other period in our lifetimes.”

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DEM DOCL

A former Trump campaign lawyer who backed President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss has been appointed to a Florida-based U.S. attorney’s office leading a sprawling probe into a slate of former federal officials who investigated Trump.

Joseph diGenova’s appointment to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida comes shortly after journalists reported that he is taking over the “grand conspiracy” investigation into intelligence and law enforcement officials, against whom Trump has long vowed to seek retribution.

In announcing the appointment Monday, Jason Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for southern Florida, said on social media that diGenova would be “stepping into a senior advisory role on key legal, policy, and enforcement matters.”

“With decades of experience—including serving as U.S. Attorney for D.C. under Ronald Reagan—diGenova brings deep expertise in federal prosecution and high-stakes investigations,” Quiñones said.

DiGenova’s appointment to oversee the conspiracy probe marks another significant blow to the DOJ’s longstanding independence from the White House. It comes just over a week after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche publicly claimed that Trump has a “right” to order investigations into his enemies.

Though Quiñones said that diGenova would help “advance the Department’s mission to protect Americans, enforce the rule of law, and ensure impartial justice,” the grand conspiracy investigation into Trump enemies features many hallmarks of past politically motivated probes initiated by Trump.

Jason Reding Quiñones (right0, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, shaking hands with former Trump campaign attorney Joseph diGenova in Florida on April 20, 2026. (Photo: U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of Florida)

DiGenova joined the U.S. attorney’s office after Maria Medetis Long, the previous senior federal prosecutor overseeing the probe, was removed from the case. She had questioned the legal viability of future charges, the New York Times reported.

Specifically, Medetis Long objected to moving forward with a portion of the inquiry focused on John Brennan, the former CIA director.

Her removal echoed personnel changes that placed Trump’s former personal attorney at the helm of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia before it pursued criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both of those criminal cases were dismissed by a federal judge last year.

Comey, whom Trump has branded a “dirty cop” and “leaker” for initiating the FBI’s probe into alleged links between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, has received a subpoena in the grand conspiracy investigation.

The exact parameters of the investigation are unclear, but prominent allies of the president and Quiñones have said it centers on the far-fetched claim that the former officials allegedly conspired to prevent Trump from exercising his constitutional and federal rights starting from his election in 2016 through his federal indictments in 2023.

While the statute of limitations on most federal crimes is five years, Quiñones’ office has been able to scrutinize actions beyond those limits by alleging a conspiracy against Trump.

In total, prosecutors overseeing the sprawling investigation have issued over 130 subpoenas so far.

Part of the investigation appears to be using a grand jury seated in Fort Pierce, Florida, overseen by Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who showed the president unusual deference while presiding over special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents investigation against the president after his first term in office.

In 2020, DiGenova and his wife, lawyer Victoria Toensing, were part of a legal team that included Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal attorney, challenging the results of the 2020 election. He also pushed conspiracy theories alleging election fraud during that vote.

Before that, diGenova and Toensing reportedly collaborated with Giuliani in efforts to extract compromising information on Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials during the last years of Trump’s first term. At the time, Toensing categorically denied their involvement.

That attempt to undermine Biden’s candidacy in the 2020 vote would eventually lead the House of Representatives to impeach Trump.

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NYT 4 20 26

As a sprawling inquiry expands into whether former federal officials committed crimes in investigating President Trump, two unusual factors could ease the way toward securing the indictments he craves.

A former lawyer for Mr. Trump’s campaign, Joseph diGenova, has been selected to lead the inquiry after a career prosecutor in Miami was removed from that post this week, a senior law enforcement official said on Saturday.

And at least part of the investigation appears to be using a grand jury based in Fort Pierce, Fla., overseen by a federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who issued rulings favorable to Mr. Trump during the classified documents case against him, the official added. Mr. diGenova is expected to split his time between Miami and Fort Pierce.

Together, the moves show how the Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control has been willing to embrace politically charged tactics and unorthodox personnel decisions in its efforts to satisfy his demands to prosecute his perceived foes — even as other prosecutors loyal to him have encountered forceful pushback from courts against his wide-ranging retribution campaign.

Mr. diGenova, 81, who served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan era, has been given the title of counselor to the attorney general and detailed to the Southern District of Florida, where the U.S. attorney, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, another Trump loyalist, is supervising the inquiry.

Mr. diGenova’s appointment comes after Maria Medetis Long, a senior career prosecutor in Miami who had been in charge of the investigation, was abruptly removed from the case. Ms. Medetis Long, who leads national security investigations for Mr. Quiñones’s office, is said to have objected to moving forward with a portion of the inquiry focused on John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director.

The law enforcement official familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal issue.

Because Judge Cannon is the only federal jurist in the Fort Pierce courthouse, she could be in a position to make critical decisions if Mr. diGenova uses the grand jury there to subpoena documents or witness testimony and the recipients balk, asking her to quash the demands.

Judge Cannon was criticized by an appeals court in 2022 after she effectively stalled the investigation into Mr. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents by appointing a so-called special master to sort through reams of materials seized from Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida. Later, Mr. Trump praised her lavishly, calling her “strong” and “brilliant,” after she tossed out the indictment altogether, ruling that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed the charges, had been improperly appointed.

In another unusual move, Christopher-James DeLorenz, who worked as a law clerk for Judge Cannon during the documents case and later served as an aide to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, was sent from the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington to Mr. Quiñones’s office earlier this year and is working on the portion of the inquiry that is focused on Mr. Brennan, the official said.

Mr. diGenova will work on the Brennan matter, too, but also the broader inquiry.

Last year, Mr. Trump’s allies began pushing for what they referred to as a “grand conspiracy” case that would portray all of the criminal inquiries of Mr. Trump as a unified plot to violate his constitutional rights. The conspiracy, by their telling, began with the investigation into Russia and its potential ties to the 2016 Trump campaign, then extended to the classified documents and 2020 election indictments.

That far-fetched theory would allow the Justice Department to scrutinize in a single case matters that would normally be barred by the five-year statute of limitations. It would also give Mr. diGenova and Mr. Reding Quiñones the authority to scrutinize events that took place in Washington from their jurisdiction in Florida.

The Justice Department has also given Mr. Reding Quiñones special authority under a statute known as Section 515, the official said. That would enable him to bring indictments in jurisdictions where he is not the U.S. attorney.

While many details remain unknown, Mr. diGenova is inheriting an inquiry whose most developed portion appears to be focused on trying to find a basis to charge Mr. Brennan with lying to Congress over a January 2017 intelligence community assessment. It concluded, among other things, that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election in part because Moscow hoped to improve Mr. Trump’s chances of winning.

As the top federal prosecutor in Washington in the 1980s, Mr. diGenova secured an espionage conviction against Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who passed sensitive information to Israel. He later became a political commentator who gravitated toward Mr. Trump during his first term in the White House.

Mr. diGenova has claimed the Russia investigation was a law-enforcement plot to frame Mr. Trump and keep him out of the White House during his first presidential campaign. In 2020, as part of the legal team for the Trump campaign, Mr. diGenova said that Christopher Krebs, a cybersecurity official who had contradicted false pro-Trump claims of election fraud, should be “shot.” (Mr. diGenova later apologized.)

A special counsel appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr in Mr. Trump’s first term, John H. Durham, already scrutinized the actions of senior law enforcement and intelligence officials involved in the early stages of the Russia investigation.

Image

John O. Brennan testifying during a 2017 Senate hearing on possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.Credit...Al Drago/The New York Times

When that inquiry began in 2019, Mr. diGenova was among the Trump supporters who celebrated, telling Fox News that he believed people like Mr. Brennan, James R. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, would go to prison.

“James Comey, Brennan and Clapper have said to themselves, ‘Which one of us is going to pay the Barr bill?’” Mr. diGenova said, adding, “This conspiracy began with John Brennan and ends with John Brennan.”

But Mr. Durham, who completed his investigation in 2023, did not find a basis to prosecute any of them, and Mr. Barr later said the Durham investigation found that the C.I.A. had “stayed in its lane.”

Grand jury subpoenas already issued under Mr. Reding Quiñones have sought records related to the 2017 intelligence community assessment. The effort appears focused on trying to build a perjury case against Mr. Brennan over a 2023 deposition to Congress. At the time, he discussed the relationship between the assessment and the Steele dossier, a compendium of later-discredited political opposition research making various claims about Mr. Trump and Russia.

The F.B.I. had wanted to include information from the dossier in the intelligence community assessment, but C.I.A. analysts balked. Mr. Brennan, in his testimony, told lawmakers that “the C.I.A. was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the intelligence community assessment.” Ultimately, as a compromise, a summary of the dossier was attached to the assessment as an appendix, as Mr. Brennan had long said.

Documents the Trump administration declassified last year complicated that account by showing that a sentence in the main body of the assessment alerted readers to the existence of the appendix, although they also showed the appendix had a header stating that its claims did not contribute to the judgment. Released files also showed that C.I.A. analysts had objected to the appendix, too, but portrayed Mr. Brennan as having pushed back in support of the compromise arrangement with the F.B.I.

Last October, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and a Trump ally, made a criminal referral, saying Mr. Brennan’s statement about the C.I.A.’s opposition amounted to a false statement. Mr. Brennan’s lawyer, Kenneth L. Wainstein, has said it did not.

Last December, Mr. Wainstein wrote to the chief federal judge in South Florida, Cecilia M. Altonaga, urging her to block the Justice Department from steering the case to Judge Cannon. The Justice Department, he wrote, appeared to be planning to “manipulate grand jury and case-assignment procedures” to put the investigation under her.

It has not been clear whether Judge Altonaga took any action. But the broader investigation has since expanded, including with subpoenas issued earlier this year for documents about the F.B.I.’s investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.

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AN 3 26

When former special counsel Jack Smith was prosecuting two separate criminal cases against Donald Trump, he dealt with two very different federal judges: Tanya Chutkan with his election interference case, and Trump appointee Aileen Cannon with the Mar-a-Lago/classified documents case.

Chutkan was never suspected of having any type of bias against Smith's election case, whereas Cannon's critics alleged that she had a bias against the classified documents case from the beginning.

According to Newsweek's Jasmine Laws, Cannon "now faces perhaps her starkest neutrality test yet" with the classified documents case.

In an article published on March 31, Laws reports, "Florida-based Judge Cannon may have thought she put Trump's classified documents case to bed last month, when, in a February 23 order, she barred anyone at the Justice Department (DOJ) from 'releasing, distributing, conveying, or sharing with anyone outside the Department of Justice any information or conclusions' from prosecutor Jack Smith's report. However, the ink was barely dry when new revelations emerged last week that pose a fresh headache for Cannon."

Laws reports that the "latest dispute" with Cannon "stems from a March 13 DOJ production to the House Judiciary Committee" that the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D- Maryland) "said included non-public materials covered by Cannon's earlier secrecy rulings in the classified-documents case."

In a late March letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Raskin wrote, "In short, the position of the DOJ appears to be that it can violate Judge Cannon's order and grand jury secrecy whenever it sees an opportunity to smear Jack Smith."

Laws notes, "Judge Cannon, a Trump-appointee, has previously been accused of unfairly making rulings favorable to Trump, such as delaying the trial until after the 2024 election, dismissing the case entirely, stating special counsel Jack Smith's appointment violated the Constitution, and the blocking of Smith's final report. Will Cannon open a contempt inquiry to establish what was leaked and if so, by whom? Her critics will be watching closely."

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an 2 26

IFrame Content

Judge Aileen Cannon issued a ruling on Monday morning that declared no person will be allowed to release information about President Donald Trump's classified documents case. But at one point in her ruling, she made an absurd claim — and one legal expert is calling her out.

"All Rise News" reporter Adam Klasfeld noted that when Cannon blocked the release of Volume II of Smith's report, she said she "'strains to find' an example of a report released after 'initiating criminal charges that did not result in a finding of guilt.' Most of John Durham's [targets] were acquitted. He released a report."

One person in the Durham case pleaded guilty "to falsifying an email."

Durham was hired to "investigate the investigators" involved with the Robert Mueller probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. While Durham attempted to indict three people, two were acquitted, and the final one accepted the guilty plea and received probation. By contrast, Mueller prosecuted 34 people and earned 8 guilty pleas or convictions.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh helped write the report by special counsel Ken Starr, which also didn't have any prosecutions for a crime.

"Judge Cannon, who appears to have been born yesterday, ignores that the entire Mueller report, which was made public, was about the un-indicted president who appointed her — and against whom a finding of guilt was never reached," agreed legal reporter Christian Fairas.

23rd

Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked another effortto obtain part two of special counsel Jack Smith's report regarding the documents President Donald Trump stole from the White House upon leaving in 2021. Among the documents Trump took and refused to return were a number of highly classified pages.

While there have been other instances of documents being packed for officials like Vice President Mike Pence and then Vice President Joe Biden, all other officials have been willing to return any documents requested. Trump refused to return the information, the AP characterized in 2023.

In her ruling on Monday, Cannon said that everyone involved with the Justice Department is "enjoined from releasing" the report. It was scheduled to be released to the public on Tuesday.

Reporter Mona Burns wrote on BlueSky, "Fitting on this crazy snowy morning: The always reliable and very corrupt Judge Aileen Cannon has permanently blocked the release of Jack Smith's classified documents report. Cannon says the release would be 'unfair' to Trump and his former co-defendants."

Slate legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern pointed out that Cannon "also bars DOJ from sharing 'any information or conclusions' from the volume. A sweeping, perpetual gag order."

"Cannon scathingly suggests that Jack Smith violated her order dismissing the criminal case against Trump when he continued to prepare his report on the prosecution from transmission to DOJ. Calls it a 'brazen stratagem' meant to 'circumvent' her authority," Stern added.

"Absurd. Also, what is the 'spirit' of a dismissal order?" questioned lawyer and analyst David R. Lurie.

"Cannon apparently considers Smith’s preparation of his final report as a violation of her order dismissing the classified documents case," commented Politico Washington law and lobbying reporter Daniel Barnes on X.

Former federal prosecutor and MS NOW legal commentator Joyce Vance noted, "A higher court may well disagree with Canon’s ruling, however. It wouldn’t be the first time. And the case is already on appeal to the 11th Circuit. I wrote about the context last night."

"That deadline was set after the Eleventh Circuit chastised Judge Cannon for dragging her feet in the matter. But when she finally got around to setting the date, she noted that Trump could appeal, which he, of course, did. Delay. Delay. Delay. Earlier this month, journalists who had previously intervened in the matter to force the release of the report went to the Eleventh Circuit," wrote Vance for her Substack.

"That court has expedited the matter, which means Trump and his supporters have briefs due next month. His delay game is still holding up, but unless the Supreme Court weighs in on his side again in a criminal matter, there’s a limited shelf life on this one. ... Other events to watch for this week: On Tuesday, Secretaries of State who have decided to participate will meet with the FBI on unspecified issues. We discussed that meeting here," she added.

The watchdog group American Oversight posted on X last week, "Trump is trying to convince Judge Cannon to destroy all copies of Volume II of Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s handling of classified documents. We warned AG Pam Bondi and top officials at the National Archives that this would break the law."

“The destruction of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report would be an extraordinary and unlawful erasure of a federal record documenting an investigation of profound public importance. The FRA imposes a clear and nondiscretionary duty on the DOJ and NARA to preserve federal records, regardless of pressure from the president and his co-conspirators or their pending motions before a court,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of the group, commented on matter in a statement.

“Special Counsel Smith testified under oath in Congress that the report documents powerful evidence that President Trump willfully retained highly classified information after leaving office, putting our national security at risk. Destroying the report would shield the president from public scrutiny and undermine the rule of law itself. Federal records belong to the American people, not to any president or administration seeking to bury the truth. If the DOJ or NARA permits the destruction of this report, they will be violating federal law," she added.

Former Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod said, "Man, if ever a judicial appointment paid off for Trump, it was this one! This classified documents case seemed like the most menacing to @realDonaldTrump . Judge Cannon blocked it on a technicality and now is permanently burying it from public view. SCOTUS here she comes!?!?"

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an 2 26

spox most transparent admin in hist while denying info access?

Before concluding his work as special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Jack Smith submitted a two-volume report on his federal prosecutions of Donald Trump — the first volume on his election interference case (which was assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkan), the second volume on his Mar-a-Lago documents case (which was assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee).

Volume 1 was released in January 2025, although Chutkan dismissed the election interference case without prejudice at Smith's request. After Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Smith cited DOJ's policy against prosecuting a sitting president when he made his request to Chutkan.

Volume 2, however, remains unreleased, and two groups — American Oversight and Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute — are urging the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to order Cannon to make it public in redacted form.

Law & Crime reporter Matt Naham, in an article published on February 10, explains, "The latter volume has never seen the outside of Cannon's chambers. Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who threw out Trump's Espionage Act prosecution and ruled that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel, has, for a calendar year, kept Volume 2 of Smith's report out of public view. At first, the rationale behind the injunction was preventing 'prejudice' to valet Waltine Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira Mar-a-Lago property manager, former Trump co-defendants who had active appeals. But those appeals went away when the Trump Administration dropped the cases, following Trump's inauguration, and so did the prospect that Nauta and de Oliveira will face charges in the future, according to the Knight Institute."

In a legal brief filed on February 9, the Knight First Amendment Institute and American Oversight told the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, "There is also no risk that a future administration will revive the charges, because the five-year statute of limitations that applies to the charges will expire in 2028, before President Trump leaves office. It is thus disingenuous for Nauta and De Oliveira to represent that they remain in 'jeopardy' and that as a result 'their due process rights remain a serious concern that strongly outweighs any interest that the Government or the public might have in the release of the Special Counsel's Report.'"

Cannon's injunction against the release of Volume 2 expires on February 24, and American Oversight is arguing that her reason for the injunction "no longer exists."

"Before the expiration date," Naham notes, "Trump and his former co-defendants have each supported Cannon issuing an order which would 'permanently' block the DOJ from releasing 'so-called Special Counsel' Smith's 'unlawfully prepared' report and destroy it."

Trump was facing four criminal indictments when he won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination: Smith's two federal cases, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference/RICO case, and then-Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.'s hush money case. Trump was convicted on 34 criminal counts in Bragg's case, but all four cases were doomed when he won the 2024 election.In an official statement, American Oversight Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said the group "will not allow the president and his guard dogs to bury information that belongs to the American people."

Chukwu stated, "For more than a year, Judge Cannon has kept the Special Counsel's final report under seal, long after any legitimate claims by Trump's co-conspirators expired. By blocking our effort to challenge her gag order, the court handed President Trump a roadmap for burying the report through delay and procedural gamesmanship."

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AN 12 25

Former CIA Director John Brennan is fearing that a judge who has frequently ruled in President Donald Trump's favor could be handling a case concerning him and several others. Now, he's asking the court to directly intervene.

The New York Times reported Monday that Brennan – who served in former President Barack Obama's administration – is officially petitioning the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida to prevent U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon (who Trump appointed in 2020) from handling a case in which he has been subpoenaed. Brennan's subpoena is part of a Department of Justice investigation into the role former Obama administration officials played in launching the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein, who is representing Brennan, acknowledged that his client's request may be unusual, but argued it was not unwarranted. He maintained that the administration sought to "manipulate grand jury and case assignment procedures" to make sure the investigation that ensnared Brennan ended up in Cannon's hands.

"[W]ere we in a normal time, we might hesitate to question the propriety of the government's actions in the grand jury process. However, we are no longer in a normal time," he wrote. "We are now in a time when the Justice Department has surrendered much of its independence and the President is directly commanding his Attorney General and her leadership team to use their prosecutorial authorities against his perceived political adversaries."

Wainstein's letter further questioned the influence that MAGA political operative Mike Davis was having on U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones, who helms the DOJ's operations in the Southern District of Florida and signed off on Brennan's subpoena. Wainstein noted that Davis has previously referred to Quiñones as his "buddy" and "good friend." Quiñones has empaneled an extra grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, where Judge Cannon is based.

As Wainstein documented, Davis has played an outsized role in publicizing the investigation that has singled out Brennan, along with former Obama administration officials James Clapper (the former director of national intelligence) and former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page among others. In November, Davis posted a selfie to social media of him and Quiñones with the caption: "Justice is coming."

Brennan's attorney urged chief judge Cecilia M. Altonaga "to defend and reinforce the rule of law in our criminal justice system at this fragile moment in our Nation's history."

"We urge Your Honor to exercise your supervisory authority as chief judge to ensure the United States Attorney does not steer this matter to the Fort Pierce Division and to the courtroom of Judge Aileen Cannon," he wrote.

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AN 12 25

President Donald Trump is urging U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to block any release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his investigation into the president’s alleged mishandling of hundreds of classified documents, in a case that had been charged in part under the Espionage Act.

On Tuesday, Trump argued in a court filing that Smith’s report should never be made public, in what would be a deviation from previous practice, Politico reported.

The president urged Cannon, whom he nominated to the bench, “to extend her 11-month-old order blocking the Justice Department from releasing the full report, which Smith submitted shortly before Trump’s second inauguration.”

In the court document, Trump’s attorney, Kendra Wharton, wrote that allowing the report to become public would “perpetuate Jack Smith’s unlawful criminal investigations and proceedings.”

Politico noted that the president’s filing “is infused with the typical disdain Trump has expressed for his former prosecutors, labeling Smith a ‘so-called special counsel’ and saying the case was ‘marred by numerous deficiencies and repeated abuses of office.'”

Smith dropped all charges against Trump after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a highly controversial ruling, found that presidents have extensive immunity from prosecution for official acts.

“Trump’s request is a break from the Justice Department’s handling of all special counsel reports in recent decades,” Politico added. “Typically, those reports are provided to Congress and made public, even when they have included damaging findings about the incumbent administration.”

The day after Trump was inaugurated, Judge Cannon denied the U.S. Department of Justice’s request to share Smith’s report on his investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with Congress. Her order came just hours after Trump signed an executive order to hold former government officials accountable for “unauthorized disclosure” of “sensitive” information, and “for election interference.”

Cannon refused to allow members of Congress to review Smith’s final report. Trump was investigated for alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return sensitive, classified, and top-secret documents, reportedly including nuclear and defense secrets. The FBI executed a lawful search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence to retrieve some of the documents.

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FORUM SHOP RUSSIAGATE BS LAWFARE ARTL III QUINONES

BLOOMB

DOJ Miami Office Readies Conspiracy Probe Into Trump Enemies (2)

Nov. 7, 2025

Jason A. Reding Quiñones, US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, speaks during a press conference on August 25, 2025 in New York City.

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The South Florida US attorney’s office is recruiting prosecutors and restructuring its chain of command in preparation for a grand jury investigation expected to target former Justice Department officials and others involved in cases against President Donald Trump.

Under the leadership of a Trump-loyalist US attorney, Jason Reding Quiñones, the Miami-based office has been inviting current staff and outside lawyers to join the new investigative team to be housed within its national security unit, said four people familiar with the situation.

The exact scope of the grand jury effort—which one of the individuals described as “special counsel oversight”—remains unclear.

A federal judge recently empaneled a new grand jury to convene Jan. 12 in Fort Pierce, Fla. That prompted close Trump allies to strongly indicate this will be the venue to review what they allege is a broad Democratic conspiracy to thwart Trump, including Russian collusion claims and indictments over Mar-a-Lago documents and election interference.

Scott Strauss, a law school classmate of Reding Quiñones who worked with him as a South Florida federal prosecutor, is playing a potentially significant role in the plans, said the people, who spoke anonymously to avoid reprisal.

Less than two years into the job, Strauss was pushed out of the US attorney’s office for trying to launch baseless 2020 voting fraud conspiracy investigations, the individuals added. He proceeded to help lead Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’ election crimes office in 2022.

People close to the office are waiting to learn if Strauss will return to head up the grand jury project, or if a respected career prosecutor currently running the national security section will remain in charge of it. Strauss recently asked at least one attorney from outside the office to join the South Florida grand jury team, three people familiar with the matter said.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment.

An email to Strauss’ currently listed work account bounced back, suggesting he’s switched jobs. Strauss declined to comment via text message, including on whether he’s in the process of returning to DOJ.

Two of the office’s recently-hired line prosecutors abruptly resigned under duress after being asked this week to join the grand jury investigation, said three individuals.

They exited following a tense meeting in which superiors accused them of leaking information about their new assignment to the media or discussing it with colleagues.

MAGA Pressure

The national security unit has long been organized as a section within the office’s criminal division, but Reding Quiñones this week informed staff that he stripped the criminal chief’s authority by ordering the national security group to start reporting directly to the US attorney’s executive office, according to a Nov. 3 email obtained by Bloomberg Law.

That announcement came 14 hours after prominent MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec denounced the criminal chief, Peter Forand, on X for donating $2,300 to the 2024 Kamala Harris presidential campaign and other Democratic causes.

Forand will “be in charge of” of the newly empaneled grand juries “to investigate Crossfire Hurricane and the Mar-a-Lago raid conspiracy,” Posobiec posted. “Can Forand be trusted to fairly investigate the Biden regime and Jack Smith if he’s friends with them and donates thousands of dollars to them?”

About two hours after Reding Quiñones emailed out the new leadership structure, Posobiec referenced his earlier Forand criticism in a new post to his 3.2 million followers: “UPDATE: Hearing good things on this.”

Forand, who former colleagues say has operated as a nonpartisan prosecutor willing to implement any administration’s objectives, had previously been removed from an office directly outside of Reding Quiñones’ executive suite to a different part of the building, three people said.

That office space is now occupied by a newly hired chief of staff to the US attorney—an unusual position under any top prosecutor. That chief of staff, Jim Poland, is an FBI agent on detail, who’s overseeing the office’s “non-litigation and administrative functions,” Reding Quiñones wrote to staff Nov. 3.

As his team lays the groundwork for the January grand jury, Reding Quiñones has been taking extra precautions in warning staff about keeping office business confidential.

Late last month, Reding Quiñones messaged all employees—flagged with a red high-priority notice—to remind them about DOJ rules forbidding unauthorized communications with the press, according to a copy of the note obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The two resigning assistant US attorneys—one a registered Republican and the other a military veteran—were both considered promising prosecutors inside the office, said three people.

Trump Adviser

The Miami office’s preparations come as Mike Davis, an influential Trump legal adviser, has called for his friend, Reding Quiñones, to investigate what he’s termed “lawfare Democrats” under a Reconstruction-era “conspiracy against rights” statute designed to combat the Ku Klux Klan.

“For the last three-and-a-half years since the Mar-a-Lago raid I have very publicly called for a grand jury in Fort Pierce,” Davis told Bloomberg Law on Thursday. He added, “I hope my very good friend Jason Reding Quiñones” will hold them accountable for the “Russian collusion hoax” and the “Mar-a-Lago raid.”

Reding Quiñones was sworn into office in August, after serving as a state trial court judge in Miami-Dade County.

He’s pushed the South Florida district—one of the largest and most historically significant US attorney’s offices in the country—closer to the president’s agenda. His mission statement includes the phrase “restore impartial justice.”

In an Oct. 29 Truth Social post, Trump singled out former officials such as Special Counsel Jack Smith and several members of his team, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Chris Wray as people who are “a disgrace to our Nation” and “should be investigated, immediately.”

MSNBC reported Thursday that Reding Quiñones’ office is also readying grand jury subpoenas for an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan related to the 2017 intelligence assessment about Russian election interference.

Fort Pierce, which is more than a two hour drive north of Miami, offers a majority conservative jury pool and a small courthouse with only one district court judge. That jurist, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, issued several ruling favorable to the then-former president while presiding over his classified documents case.

(Updated with reporting on two prosecutor resignations.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Penn in Washington at bpenn@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Seth Stern at sstern@bloomberglaw.com; Rob Tricchinelli at rtricchinelli@bloombergindustry.com

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ABC

A key Trump ally says a federal grand jury has been empaneled in Florida that will begin meeting in January to investigate what he calls a decade-long conspiracy against President Donald Trump.

In a series of interviews with conservative podcasters over the last week, conservative attorney Mike Davis -- a close friend and informal adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top Trump administration officials -- has claimed that the grand jury will consider whether to bring criminal charges against top Democratic figures that Davis claims have colluded over the last decade to impede Trump, beginning with the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election through the criminal cases against the president.

The Federalist Society's Mike Davis speaks with Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt at the CPAC DC conference at the Gaylord National Resort in Oxon Hill, MD on Thursday, 20, 2025. (

"I've been publicly calling for this for three years. I'm going to make damn sure that these lawfare Democrats go to prison during the four years of President Trump's second term," _{{Davis told}_}_{ }_conservative commentator Benny Johnson on Friday.

### Attorneys for former special counsel Jack Smith dispute 'inaccurate' claims he tapped senators' phones

While Davis does not hold a government position, _{{court documents}_}_{ }_confirm that a federal judge last month ordered a grand jury to be empaneled in Fort Pierce, Florida, beginning in January at the request of the Trump administration.

A representative of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the purpose of the grand jury.

A conservative lawyer who helped shepherd Trump's nominees through the Supreme Court confirmation process, Davis now runs the Article III Project, an organization that describes itself as devoted to helping "fight leftist lawfare to defend the rule of law."

Trump has recently called for the prosecution of some of the same officials accused by Davis of using lawfare to target him.

"They cheated and rigged the 2020 Presidential Election," Trump wrote on social media Saturday. "These Radical Left Lunatics should be prosecuted for their illegal and highly unethical behavior!"

Trump has not yet commented on Davis' remarks on the conservative podcasts.

In an interview on "The Charlie Kirk Show," Davis said his "buddy" Jason Quiñones -- the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida -- moved to empanel the grand jury after Davis "pushed very hard" to investigate what he says is a conspiracy against Trump.

Davis has suggested that top officials, including former Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, FBI Director Chris Wray and Special Counsel Jack Smith should be compelled to testify before the grand jury to answer questions about what Davis says is the politicized use of the legal system.

Quiñones and representatives from the Southern District of Florida did not immediately respond to ABC News' requests for comment.

Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason A. Reding Quinones speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Attorney's Office on August 25, 2025 in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City.

Davis has argued that the former Biden administration officials and others violated a section of federal law, known as 18 U.S.C. § 241, by conspiring to interfere with federally protected rights.

### House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan calls on Jack Smith to testify over Trump investigations

Created in response to a surge in violence during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, the law has historically been used to protect the civil rights of Black Americans, though prosecutors have expanded it to apply to broader election-related and police-misconduct offenses.

Notably, Trump was accused of violating the statute after he allegedly sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, though the case was dismissed after he won the 2024 election.

Davis claims that a wide array of actions -- including the FBI's investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection -- were coordinated efforts by Democrats to impede and ultimately imprison Trump.

Davis also argues the criminal and civil cases against Trump, purported issues with Trump's Secret Service protection ahead of two assassination attempts last year and the efforts to remove Trump from the ballot in 2024 could also be violations of federal law.

"They took the country to the break. They tried to bankrupt Trump for non-fraud. They tried to throw him in prison four times for non-crimes. They tried to take him off the ballot in Colorado and made it elsewhere unconstitutionally. They tried to take off his head when Joe Biden underfunded Trump's Secret Service protection, said he was the biggest threat to democracy and to put a bull's eye on Trump," Davis said on Friday on the Johnson podcast.

With some Republican senators now raising concerns over the scope of the federal investigation of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election -- including the subpoenaing of phone records of multiple senators -- Davis has argued he has enough support to carry out a sweeping investigation.

:{[:{The Alto Lee Adams Sr. United States Courthouse where U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled former President Donald Trump's trial to begin Aug. 14 in her courtroom on June 20, 2023 in Fort Pierce, Florida.}:

"There's now a special grand jury that Jason [Quiñones] just motioned the court and the Southern District of Florida to open in Fort Pierce. That's going to be empaneled in January. I think that sounds like a great place to open up this grand jury on Crossfire Hurricane and against these lawfare Democrats," Davis said Friday.

The setting for the grand jury in Fort Pierce's federal courthouse is a familiar one for Trump and his allies -- it's the same courthouse where he attended multiple hearings in his criminal case for allegedly retaining classified documents and obstructing justice. Davis claims the classified documents case,which was dismissed by a federal judge before the 2024 election, is part of the conspiracy against Trump as well.

"As I promised and as I will deliver, justice is definitely coming," Davis said Friday on Johnson's podcast.

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AN 11 25

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon just got a stern warning from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to do her job before her superiors take over.

That's according to Politico legal correspondent Josh Gerstein, who reported Monday on the Eleventh Circuit's order regarding the handling of former Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's final report. Appellate judges told Cannon she has 60 days to act on the remaining motions to unseal Smith's report, or else the Eleventh Circuit will take matters into their own hands.

"Petitioners filed their motions on February 14 and February 24, 2025, and filed notification on July 7 and July 10, 2025, informing the district court that their motions had been fully briefed for more than 90 days," the two-page order read, pointing out that those who have filed the motions "have established undue delay in resolution of their motions to intervene."

"To date, the district court has not ruled or conducted any other further proceedings on the pending motions," judges added.

Cannon — who President Donald Trump appointed to the Southern District of Florida in 2020 — was the presiding judge overseeing Smith's criminal investigation into Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Cannon was routinely criticized throughout the case for "slow-walking" the legal process in what was widely regarded as the strongest of Trump's four criminal cases.

IFrame Content

The Trump appointee ultimately dismissed Smith's 37 felony indictments against Trump after the Supreme Court granted Trump absolute broad criminal immunity for anything deemed an "official act" in the 2024 Trump v. United States case. Cannon cited Justice Clarence Thomas' argument in Trump v. United States that Smith's appointment as special counsel was not in line with the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which lays out the Senate confirmation process.

Despite Thomas' argument, there have been multiple DOJ special counsels who were not confirmed by the U.S. Senate whose investigations nonetheless were conducted without impediment. No special counsel since 1999 has been confirmed by the Senate due to existing DOJ procedures allowing an attorney general to appoint a special counsel to oversee an independent investigation.

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above the law 2024

judge Aileen Cannon really wanted to rid herself of the criminal case involving her professional patron Donald Trump lifting boxes and boxes of classified documents of profound interest to America’s adversaries and tossing them in front of his toilet when he wasn’t waving them around in front of random visitors. So, armed with a bonkers concurrence from Justice Clarence Thomas — that even Sam Alito thought amounted to an Appeal to Heaven too far — Cannon hammered out nearly 100 pages of gloop about how special counsels can’t be real because the history and tradition of the Appointments Clause trumped the actual lived history and tradition of special counsels.

Whatever. Cannon has long identified as an Originalist, and the first rule of Originalism is that actual history is for suckers. It’s why they’ve created a whole cottage industry of publishing flimsy “alternative facts”-based history in student-edited journals for judges to cite when peer-reviewed scholarship doesn’t live up to right-wing fan fiction. But a lot of the public might not grasp how divorced “Originalism” is from a serious intellectual effort to understand the “original” history behind the Constitution.

Cannon is, also, one of several conservative federal judges who suck up luxury vacations funded by right-wing groups and then fail to disclose these gifts. And despite being called out for this, Cannon has done it again, with ProPublica identifying another conservative junket that she managed to not put on her forms.

But this paragraph jumped out:

Cannon’s annual disclosure form for 2023, which was due in May and offers another chance to report gifts and reimbursements from outside parties, has yet to be posted. (Cannon reported the two Montana trips on her annual disclosure forms, but the required 30-day privately funded seminar reports had not been posted. In 2021, Cannon incorrectly listed the school as “George Madison University.”)

Who can forget Founding Father George Madison?

Cannon intends, of course, to reference George Mason, the anti-Federalist whose work inspired the Bill of Rights and whose name graces the university attempting to posture itself as a right-wing outpost — complete with accepting a sketchy donation to rename its law school ASS Law in an unwittingly appropriate homage to Antonin Scalia. As opposed to James Madison, the Federalist Papers contributor and president whose name graces the university that won the Sun Belt conference to get into March Madness.

This might seem like a nitpick, and in a sense it is. Madisonian malapropisms are understandable. But on the other hand, someone who cites Framers as a source of second-hand credibility probably should take care to never betray even the hint that all that talk about divining meaning from a deep and thorough mastery of the Founding might be, you know, disingenuous bullshit.

Judge Aileen Cannon Failed to Disclose a Right-Wing Junket [ProPublica]

Earlier: Aileen Cannon Dismisses Trump Classified Documents Case

Supreme Court Justices Aren’t The Only Ones Failing To Report Lavish Trips

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new rep

The Trump-appointed judge who threw out the former president’s criminal classified documents case wasn’t up-front about her own conflicts, and now the details of her backroom liaisons are beginning to trickle out.

Judge Aileen Cannon failed to disclose that she attended a banquet at a conservative law school in May 2023 to honor the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, flouting a 2006 rule requiring judges to file formal disclosures when they attend seminars or conferences that could influence their decisions. But it’s not the only time that Cannon has failed to notify the public of her partisan behavior, according to ProPublica.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took week-long trips for legal colloquiums sponsored by conservative judiciaries and hosted at an expensive resort in Pray, Montana, where rooms can cost upward of $1,000 per night. The retreats did not go reported until NPR reporters called Cannon out on the omission as part of NPR’s national investigation into gaps in judicial disclosures.

“Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, told ProPublica.

Cannon, who seemed determined to hold up the classified documents case at every possible opportunity, ultimately tossed the case in July on the basis that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional. Smith is currently appealing the decision with the Eleventh Circuit. (William H. Pryor Jr., the chief judge of the Eleventh Circuit, was also at the May 2023 banquet, though he properly disclosed his attendance.) But her own future on the case isn’t clear: CREW has asked the appeals court to intervene and replace the controversial judge on the critical case.

If the government wins the appeal, they will be able to ask the court to assign a new judge to the case—though, ultimately, the future of the classified documents trial is contingent on the outcome of the November election. Should Trump lose, the case will move forward regardless of whether the government wins the current appeal. But should he win, Trump could use his presidential powers to wipe the federal case off the map.

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AN 1 25

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has denied the Department of Justice’s request to share Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with Congress. Her order came just hours after now-President Trump signed an executive order to hold former government officials accountable for “unauthorized disclosure” of “sensitive” information, and “for election interference.”

Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee whose rulings have been highly criticized, refused to allow members of Congress to review Smith’s final report. Trump was investigated for alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return sensitive, classified, and top secret documents, reportedly including nuclear and defense secrets. The FBI executed a lawful search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence to retrieve some of the documents.

Part of her reasoning, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, is that Congress “hasn’t asked for it and it’s not clear they need it, she says.”

“The ruling will make it easier for Trump to bury the report on the special counsel’s criminal probe,” Politico adds.

Late Monday night, one of the reportedly dozens of executive orders President Trump signed also addressed sensitive and classified information.

In it, he revoked the security clearances of dozens of former federal government officials, including some who had worked in his first administration, like former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, whom he criticized.

The list includes the 51 former U.S. intelligence officials who signed a letter reportedly stating that the disclosure of emails purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

“Many of the former officials are long retired and no longer hold active clearances — meaning that the move may have limited practical impact on their careers — but the order nevertheless suggests that Trump intends to act on threats he’s made to penalize national security and intelligence professionals whom he deems to be his enemies,” CNN reported.

“They should be prosecuted for what they did,” Trump had said.

“National security is … damaged by the publication of classified information,” the executive order reads. “Former National Security Advisor John R. Bolton published a memoir for monetary gain after he was terminated from his White House position in 2019. The book was rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government. The memoir’s reckless treatment of sensitive information undermined the ability of future presidents to request and obtain candid advice on matters of national security from their staff. Publication also created a grave risk that classified material was publicly exposed.”

In 2023, Bolton commented on the classified documents criminal case against Trump, at the time 37 felony charges, most of which were under the Espionage Act.

“Trump appeared to have a ‘pattern’ of wanting to collect materials ‘of interest to him,’ including classified documents,” Bolton said, as The Hill reported. He also “knocked Trump’s behavior as ‘very disturbing.'”

Bolton told MSNBC, “there were some [documents] that we did get back. Others, the most famous, to me, it demonstrates why I don’t need to read the indictment or believe its allegations are true, although I’m pretty confident they are — was the famous tweet that he did after getting an overhead picture of a failed Iranian missile launch, which he was shown during an intelligence briefing. [He] didn’t give [it] back, and it was tweeted before the intelligence officials got back to their office.”

Bolton was “referring to a 2019 tweet from the then-president.”

Trump’s order on Monday also stated: “It is the policy of the United States that individuals who hold government-issued security clearances should not use their clearance status to influence U.S. elections.”

Among the intelligence professionals the order revokes security clearance from are well-known cable news commentators, and political and national security experts.

In addition to Bolton, some on the list include: James Clapper, Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, John Brennan, Jeremy Bash, and Nada Bakos.

Margaret Brennan, CBS News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and “Face the Nation” moderator noted that Trump revoking “the security clearances of a long list of former intelligence officials … makes it hard for his own team to seek informed counsel from them.”

Mark Zaid, an attorney who specializes in national security issues, including security clearances, noted, “no President has ever done this before.”

Watch video of Trump below or at this link.

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an 1 25

Cannon 'sends a message' to Trump by blocking report she has 'no power over': ex-federal prosecutor

'Suppression of the truth': Legal experts blast Judge Cannon for blocking Jack Smith report

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omfg

1 25 an

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued a ruling temporarily blocking the release of Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's final report in the waning days of President Joe Biden's administration.

The three-page order prevents Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Biden DOJ and "all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals” from “releasing, sharing, or transmitting the Final Report or any drafts of such Report outside the Department of Justice.” But as Politico's Kyle Cheney reports, Cannon — who then-President Donald Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2020 — may not have the jurisdiction to intervene in the publication of the report, which is required by the federal special counsel statute.

Whether the report sees the light of day will ultimately rest with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has overturned Cannon's rulings on two previous occasions. Legal nonprofit National Security Counselors posted to Bluesky that the 11th Circuit, which meets next week, is not likely to go agree with Cannon's decision.

"[T]hey get the final say, and they're not going to play the delay game that Trump really wanted Cannon to play," the organization wrote.

Portland, Oregon-based attorney Patrick De Klotz observed that Cannon's decision was handed down right around the same time the president-elect praised the judge as "brilliant" during a Tuesday press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate. And civil rights lawyer Subodh Chandra condemned Cannon for "aiding and abetting suppression of the truth," adding: "Shame. Shame. Shame."

Other legal experts speculated that Cannon's move was less about the report itself and more about her jockeying for a position on the Supreme Court. Attorney Jeffrey Evan Gold, who is a legal analyst for CNN, NBC, ABC and others, responded to the news of Cannon blocking the report's release by referring to her as "Justice Cannon." Northeastern Illinois University political science professor William Adler wrote that Americans should "get used to" saying "Supreme Court nominee Aileen Cannon." And Politico magazine contributor Joshua Zeitz opined that it was "pretty easy to see how this goes."

"Alito will retire, Trump will name her to the court, and she’ll easily be confirmed with unanimous GOP support and a handful of older Democratic Senators who think it’s still 1978," Zeitz wrote.

Click here to read Cheney's full report in Politico, and click here to read the full text of Cannon's order.

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ref

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.

Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”

A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.

It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize.

Current rates for standard rooms at Sage Lodge can exceed $1,000 per night, depending on the season. With both Montana trips, Cannon’s required seminar disclosures were not posted until NPR reporters asked about the omissions this year as part of a broader national investigation of gaps in judicial disclosures.

Cannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the clerk in the Southern District of Florida wrote in an email that Cannon had filed the Sage Lodge trips with the federal judiciary’s administrative office but had “inadvertently” not taken the second step of posting them on the court’s website. She explained that “Judges often do not realize they must input the information twice.”

The clerk said she had no information about the May 2023 banquet.

“Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Cannon’s husband, Joshua Lorence, a restaurant executive, accompanied her to the 2021 and 2022 colloquiums, which featured noted conservative jurists, lawyers and professors as well as lengthy “afternoon study breaks,” according to records obtained by ProPublica. Cannon emailed university staff to submit airport parking expenses and inquire about rental car reimbursement.

The rule for paid seminars is among the policies set by the Judicial Conference. Federal judges are also required by law to file annual financial disclosures, listing items such as assets, outside income and gifts.

Cannon’s annual disclosure form for 2023, which was due in May and offers another chance to report gifts and reimbursements from outside parties, has yet to be posted. (Cannon reported the two Montana trips on her annual disclosure forms, but the required 30-day privately funded seminar reports had not been posted. In 2021, Cannon incorrectly listed the school as “George Madison University.”)

The court’s administrative office declined to say if she requested a one-time extension to give her until Aug. 13 to file. A spokesperson would not discuss whether she met the deadline or the status of her disclosure, which must be reviewed internally.

Cannon’s performance during almost four years of a lifetime appointment has drawn criticism from lawyers, former federal judges and courtroom observers who told ProPublica that she doesn’t render timely decisions and has made unpredictable rulings in both civil and criminal matters. On July 15, she threw out the case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith that alleges Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence; Cannon called Smith’s appointment unconstitutional since he was not nominated by the president and approved by the Senate.

Smith is appealing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked the court to remand her decision and replace her.

By contrast, Trump, who appointed Cannon in 2020 to the Fort Pierce courthouse, has praised her brilliance, and Federalist Society founder Steven Calabresi called her a heroine for throwing out the criminal case against Trump.

For decades, judicial education programs sponsored by George Mason’s Law and Economics Center have drawn in 5,000 state and federal judges and four current Supreme Court justices, according to its website. The school says its programs strive for balance and intellectual rigor. But conference agendas and speaker lists that the university must file with the courts detail lectures and panel discussions built around Federalist Society principles that are associated with conservative legal movements.

Ken Turchi, associate dean for external affairs, said the law school plays no role in judicial disclosures. “Judges’ decisions to submit (or not submit) disclosure forms are theirs alone — it’s a self-reporting process,” he said.

The guest list for the May 2023 Scalia Forum included William H. Pryor Jr., chief judge of the 11th Circuit, which is now hearing Smith’s appeal. Pryor and dinner speaker Kyle Duncan, a 5th Circuit judge, did file their required disclosures for the Scalia dinner.

Pryor’s court has overruled Cannon twice in the Trump case. It sided with the government in September 2022 on a motion for a stay and found that it “had established a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” In December 2022, it ruled that she erred in naming a special master to examine classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. After that decision, Cannon had to dismantle an expensive operation set up by her special master, a senior federal judge in New York.

Gabe Roth, who directs Fix the Court, a nonprofit judicial reform group, said compliance with the privately funded seminar rule has improved in some circuits since his group pressed for compliance with the Administrative Office of the Courts.

“They’re a more effective way for litigants and the public to get a sense of what types of individuals and groups a judge might be hanging out with and learning from,” he said.

Records show that Cannon submitted minor reimbursement requests related to the Scalia Forum trip after she returned, including the 158 miles she drove round trip to the airport. She inquired with George Mason staff about details for an Alaska excursion recommended by a former lawyer in the Trump-era White House Counsel’s Office.

Cannon registered for George Mason’s Hill Country Colloquium at a Texas resort in December 2023 but had to back out for scheduling reasons.

“I hope to join that event, and others, in future years,” she wrote.

If you have information about Judge Aileen M. Cannon, please contact Marilyn W. Thompson at marilyn.thompson@propublica.org.

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'Stop the clock': Ex-US atty says Judge Cannon weaponizing 'delay' to kill Jack Smith report

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The number of active criminal indictments that former President Donald Trump is facing decreased from four to three when Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed special counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case. Smith has appealed Cannon's decision, but both of the federal indictments he brought against Trump — the documents case and the election interference prosecution — will be doomed if Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election.

First, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has a longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Second, Trump would be sure to nominate a loyalist for U.S. attorney general. And that loyalist, according to Newsweek reporter Sean O'Driscoll, could be Cannon if Trump wins.

Trump's critics are sounding the alarm, arguing that Cannon is the last person who should lead the DOJ.

READ MORE:[James Carville is 'certain' Harris will win — Here are 3 reasons why

In an October 22 post on X, formerly Twitter, political strategist Lindy Li wrote, "Judge Aileen Cannon delayed Trump's trial past the election and ran out the clock for him. She protected Trump every step of the way. She attacked Jack Smith and smeared his role as unconstitutional. Now Trump is considering making her Attorney General. Can you say QUID PRO QUO?!"

In response to Li's tweet, former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks posted, "It's insane."

Wine-Banks has been a scathing critic of Trump, who she considers way more dangerous than President Richard Nixon. Trump, according to Wine-Banks, has repeatedly crossed lines that Nixon wouldn't have dared to cross.

Attorney Tristan Snell tweeted, "BREAKING: Trump considering Judge Aileen Cannon and indicted former Deputy AG Jeffrey Clark for US Attorney General if he wins This should be grounds for IMMEDIATE investigation: - Cannon: is there a quid pro quo on Mar-a-Lago case? - Clark: blatant case of witness tampering."

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CREW amicus get rid of trump judge b/c jack smith cannot? knows will nit win? 9 24 aileen cannon

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an pro pub 9 24

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.

A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.

It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

Cannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the clerk in the Southern District of Florida wrote in an email that Cannon had filed the Sage Lodge trips with the federal judiciary’s administrative office but had “inadvertently” not taken the second step of posting them on the court’s website. She explained that “Judges often do not realize they must input the information twice.”

The clerk said she had no information about the May 2023 banquet.

“Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Smith is appealing to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked the court to remand her decision and replace her.

By contrast, Trump, who appointed Cannon in 2020 to the Fort Pierce courthouse, has praised her brilliance, and Federalist Society founder Steven Calabresi called her a heroine for throwing out the criminal case against Trump.

Ken Turchi, associate dean for external affairs, said the law school plays no role in judicial disclosures. “Judges’ decisions to submit (or not submit) disclosure forms are theirs alone — it’s a self-reporting process,” he said.

Pryor’s court has overruled Cannon twice in the Trump case. It sided with the government in September 2022 on a motion for a stay and found that it “had established a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” In December 2022, it ruled that she erred in naming a special master to examine classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. After that decision, Cannon had to dismantle an expensive operation set up by her special master, a senior federal judge in New York.

Gabe Roth, who directs Fix the Court, a nonprofit judicial reform group, said compliance with the privately funded seminar rule has improved in some circuits since his group pressed for compliance with the Administrative Office of the Courts.

“They’re a more effective way for litigants and the public to get a sense of what types of individuals and groups a judge might be hanging out with and learning from,” he said.

Records show that Cannon submitted minor reimbursement requests related to the Scalia Forum trip after she returned, including the 158 miles she drove round trip to the airport. She inquired with George Mason staff about details for an Alaska excursion recommended by a former lawyer in the Trump-era White House Counsel’s Office.

Cannon registered for George Mason’s Hill Country Colloquium at a Texas resort in December 2023 but had to back out for scheduling reasons.

“I hope to join that event, and others, in future years,” she wrote.

If you have information about Judge Aileen M. Cannon, please contact Marilyn W. Thompson at marilyn.thompson@propublica.org.

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former President Donald Trump's allies are working to reshape American law into a weapon to be used against their political enemies, wrote Jesse Wegman in a scathing editorial for The New York Times.

Trump's pick of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) underscores this, he wrote, because Vance embodies the far-right's commitment to a key goal of the controversial Project 2025 plan to transform the government into an authoritarian loyalty cult to the GOP.

Vance, wrote Wegman, "predicted ... that the former president, who had been recently disgraced by his insurrectionary attempt to overturn the 2020 election, would nevertheless run again in 2024. Should Mr. Trump win, Mr. Vance said, he had some advice: 'Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.' And if the courts ruled against him? No problem, Mr. Vance said: Just blow them off."

This is already happening, wrote Wegman — and another of Trump's appointees, District Judge Aileen Cannon, is showing how it will work in her move to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, which special counsel Jack Smith is already moving to appeal.

In her decision, Cannon concluded Smith, "Was not validly appointed to his post because no federal law authorizes the appointment of someone from outside the Justice Department to perform that task," wrote Wegman, noting she based this entirely on a non-majority concurrence from Justice Clarence Thomas in the case granting Trump a presumption of immunity in a separate case.

ALSO READ:'Keep lying': Late night Trump rant about Harris quickly turns against him

"As a matter of law and fact, this is not merely wrong, it is flagrantly, embarrassingly wrong ... It is not a close or complicated legal question" — indeed, the Supreme Court ruled the law allows this in 1974, and Cannon pretends they didn't.

These sorts of machinations by Vance and Cannon are exactly what to expect the whole government to become should Trump get his way, Wegman concluded ominously.

"This is what a second Trump term would look like," he wrote. "Ambitious judges who may not have been Trump loyalists at first will watch what’s been happening in recent days and get the message about what it takes to advance their careers. In this way, Judge Cannon embodies the future that Mr. Vance described in 2021. She is part of a legal elite raised on Trumpism that will use their perches in the judiciary and legal world to enforce a one-sided version of law that is about power and outcomes over any liberal principle."

In other words, he said, this is a reality where "the rule of law is for suckers or, worse, only for specific people. Our people."

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How Cannon ruling mirrors Nixon’s 'Saturday Night Massacre': ex-federal prosecutor

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matt g says scotus

Andrew Weissmann, an attorney who served as a lead prosecutor in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, on Monday detailed the impact of Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Donald Trump, telling MSNBC she “stands alone” in her ruling.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, delivered the shocking ruling on Monday, dismissing the classified documents case against the former president. Cannon decided the appointment of Smith violated the Constitution under both the Appointments Clause and the Appropriations Clause.

Weissmann, speaking to MSNBC, noted “under both those constitutional provisions, [Cannon] said that the executive branch does not have that power. “

“She’s restricting the power of the executive branch of government — that is the president, the attorney general — from appointing a special counsel, saying that's something that would have to be done by congressional statute, or the president himself would have had to appoint this person, not [Attorney General] Merrick Garland.”

“It is in distinct contrast to all of the other cases that have dealt with this,” Weissmann said.

Weissmann noted various special counsel appointments, including Robert Hur, who investigated President Joe Biden, and the special counsel who prosecuted Hunter Biden.

“All of those other judges, where there's been this challenge, have rejected the view of Judge Cannon,” Weissmann said. “She stands alone.”

“What she's doing in many ways is putting in writing what she has done de facto in this case: she’s delayed this case at every step,” Weissmann continued. “The one difference now is that by making this ruling in writing — not just sort of slowing the case to a complete standstill, which has been her want — this will go to the 11th Circuit [Court of Appeals]. The government can appeal this because every other case they have won.”

Weissmann explained he “actually litigated this issue when [he] was part of special counsel Mueller's investigation.”

“And the courts, I think quite correctly, rejected what Judge Cannon did, and said that the attorney general has ample authority to appoint a special counsel as an inferior officer,” he said. “This, though, is the kind of issue I think will go to the 11th Circuit and I think it might go to the Supreme Court.”

Weissmann added a “final point” for “cynical viewers,” telling MSNBC “they can put this decision by Judge Cannon alongside the Supreme Court's immunity decision from two weeks ago to really think about the problem with rule of law in this country.”

“This is the kind of decision that would affect the D.C. case,” the attorney later added. Remember, D.C. is where Jack Smith has the January 6th insurrection case. The D.C. Court of Appeals has rejected Judge Cannon's decision. They do not believe there's a problem with the way in which the special counsel was appointed. That's what they held in the Mueller investigation. they said there was ample authority.”

Weismann said in that case, a Trump-appointed judge “held there was no problem at all with the attorney general appointing [special counsel Mueller].”

“Her reasoning was that the attorney general can follow any sort of internal guidance he wants in running the Department of Justice,” Weismann said. “He can appoint all sorts of people to help him. He can hire people. He has all sorts of underlings that are at his beck and call.”

“There’s no problem in the attorney general hiring all sorts of people beneath him to carry out the work of the Department of Justice,” the attorney explained. “She said that's true of special counsel Mueller, it would be true of special counsel Jack Smith. That's the reasoning in D.C. It was rejected by Judge Cannon. So there's now conflict between the D.C. cases and Judge Cannon.”

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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in a 93-page opinion has dismissed the Espionage Act/classified documents case against ex-president Donald Trump, claiming Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland “violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.” Legal experts, calling her ruling “wrong,” say U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is to blame.

Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury on 37 felony charges, 31 of them under the Espionage Act, in the case related to his alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return hundreds of documents, many classified, some top secret, and some so secret they include the nation’s nuclear secrets.

“There’s no case any more, it’s been dismissed,” observed former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, a former Counselor to the U.S. Attorney General, on MSNBC. He said he is “confident” Judge Cannon’s ruling would be appealed.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported the bombshell news:

IFrame Content

Other legal experts agree.

“This ruling (which is wrong six ways from Sunday) can (and will) be immediately appealed to the Eleventh Circuit,” wrote professor of law Steve Vladeck. “To me, the only question is whether the Special Counsel also asks for the case to be reassigned on remand…”

Former federal civil rights prosecutor Dr. Kristy Parker, Counsel at Protect Democracy, said: “Hard to characterize how wrong this is — at least in a world where law matters. We may not be in that world any longer.”

Last month in oral arguments the argument Smith’s appointment was unlawful was made to Cannon, MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin noted Monday morning, saying that the judge appeared at the time to dismiss that claim.

“People tried this against Special Counsel Robert Muller,” MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian stressed, “and were unsuccessful and it’s really important to point out and so viewers understand there’s nothing in this opinion that speaks to the merits of this case, to the classified documents to the allegations of obstruction of justice. This is an entirely procedural issue. It’s a constitutional question. It’s whether whether the law establishing the Special Counsel violates the appointments clause, and she also actually made a ruling on a separate argument about the appropriations clause. And and she, and she’s decided that the way Congress is funding the way the Special Counsel is funded, is not appropriate either.”

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis described the dismissal as “Insanity.”

Noting today is also the start of the 2024 Republican National Convention, founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy, Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel, blasted the Trump-appointed judge:

“Cannon likely thought releasing her latest gift to Trump at the opening of the RNC would help him, but changing today’s headlines to a pic reminding that Trump stole our nation’s most sensitive nat’l security docs and hid them in his bathroom may not be the gift she thinks it is.”

Cannon likely thought releasing her latest gift to Trump at the opening of the RNC would help him, but changing today’s headlines to a pic reminding that Trump stole our nation’s most sensitive nat’l security docs and hid them in his bathroom may not be the gift she thinks it is. pic.twitter.com/9aUEg3yGLh

— Ian Bassin 🇺🇸 (@ianbassin) July 15, 2024

MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney called Cannon’s decision, “Absolutely incredible,” while concurring the ruling will be appealed.

“That’s it,” she added. “Unless the 11th Circuit & ultimately SCOTUS disagree, Trump goes free for walking out of the White House with top secret documents. At best, this is seriously delayed. Disgusted.”

Some legal experts, including Vance, point to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ separate concurrence in the Trump immunity case as giving Judge Cannon the roadmap to come to this decision.

“This was the argument advanced by Justice Thomas in his concurrence in Trump v. US, which no other Justice signed into at the time,” Vance noted.

Professor of law Leah Litman observed, “Justice Thomas’s ‘Cannon-currence’ worked.”

Parenthetically, she explained, “In the Trump immunity case, Justice Thomas wrote separately to suggest the special counsel was unlawfully appointed; the reasoning laid out the roadmap for this (wrong) result/decision.”

“Justice Thomas strikes again,” wrote professor of law Melisa Murray. “Not only did a majority of the Court give presidents almost unfettered license in the immunity case, Justice Thomas concurred separately to question the constitutionality of the special counsel. He laid the table and Judge Cannon took a seat.”

“Surprising absolutely no one,” observed legal journalist Cristian Farias. “This is a Federalist Society pipe dream, one they could never achieve during the Mueller years. And precisely what Clarence Thomas, all alone, suggested should happen in the Trump immunity case.”

But, he added, “This is not the end.”

Read the social media posts above or at this link.

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judge Cannon slammed for expanding 'absurd' hearing on Smith removal request]

https://www.alternet.org/aileen-cannon-cnn-jack-smith/)

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maybe gets her booted?

'Matter of life and death': Former US attorney slams Judge Cannon’s latest 'absurd' ruling

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special counsel Jack Smith's federal Mar-a-Lago documents case against former President Donald Trump has run into a long list of obstacles.

Judge Aileen Cannon has repeatedly delayed the case — which is on hold indefinitely and appears unlikely to go to trial before the November election. And the Florida-based Trump appointee has forcefully rejected Smith's request to impose a limited gag order against Trump, unlike Judge Tanya Chutkan in Smith's election interference case.

One of the arguments that some of Trump's allies have been making is that Smith's appointment as special counsel was illegally made by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland — a claim Smith has slammed as nonsense. And former Attorney General Michael Mukasey is now expressing his views on the matter in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

Law & Crime's Matt Naham reports, "U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, on Wednesday, (May 29), granted an unopposed motion to add Michael Mukasey, the 81st U.S. attorney general who served during George W. Bush's presidency, as an amicus curiae. In a Tuesday motion for leave to join a group of existing amici, Mukasey asserted his time and experience as attorney general will aid Cannon as she considers the former president's motion to dismiss the Espionage Act case on unlawful appointment grounds."

Naham notes that some of Trump's supporters are claiming that Smith should have been confirmed by the U.S. Senate before he could act as a special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). And Smith has countered that the same argument was used against former special counsel Robert Mueller during the Russia probe and rejected.

"Trump's lawyers have argued, as Hunter Biden's separately have, that the special counsel was unlawfully appointed and funded, claiming that Smith is a 'principal officer' whose appointment by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland required confirmation by the U.S. Senate," the Law & Crime reporter explains. "But these same arguments were raised during Mueller's Russia investigation and lost time and again, as courts ruled the special counsel is an 'inferior officer' who doesn’t need to be confirmed by the Senate and still answers to the U.S. attorney general."

Smith has noted that "under governing authority," a DOJ special counsel is an "inferior officer" who may be appointed by an attorney general and is "subject to supervision and oversight" by that person.

READ MORE:['Mother Theresa could not beat these charges': Trump not confident about jury deliberations

*Read Law & Crime's full report at this link.

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an 5 24 fail

Trump-appointed judge slammed as a 'menace' after denying Jack Smith’s gag order request

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NO CHAnce of trial before election but opens a slot for smith?

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with US District Judge Aileen Cannon's decision earlier this week to postpone Donald Trump's classified documents trial indefinitely, the chance of a start date ahead of the November election has become more unlikely.

Newsweek noted that the Trump-appointed judge said in her Tuesday, May 7 ruling that "there were eight outstanding substantive pending motions for her to rule on and predicted this will take until at least late July."

Legal expert and Brookings senior fellow Norm Eisen criticized Cannon's ruling, saying, "I'm not surprised, but I am disgusted. Whether she's doing it out of partiality for the former president or is just a lousy jurist, this latest blunder by Judge Cannon takes the cake.

MSNBC's The Weekend co-host and former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele asked former Department of Justice Director of the Office of Public Affairs Anthony Coley about whether or not Cannon's appointment to the Trump case could've possibly been avoided or averted.

"At the end of the day — and I want to be careful because we have immense respect for our jurists and the judges and the trials and the process — but there is such a thing as qualification and capability given the immense importance of a case, and we know the rotation system in Florida just happened to land on her," Steele said.

The former RNC chair asked Coley, "Why didn't the US government, the DOJ say, 'This trial is too important to put in the hands of an inexperienced judge, one. And two, when they didn't do that, but then saw the wheels coming off this — because we all saw where this was going with the delay — that they didn't step in and change up?"

The former DOJ official replied, "The curious case of Aileen George. When people say the fight is fixed, this is the type of stuff they are talking about. You have a woman here who intentionally appears to be dragging her feet. And she is proving herself to appear in my opinion, a MAGA activist in a black robe who has given Trump exactly what he wants, and that is unintentional delay."

The Hill noted earlier this week that "Cannon is spending considerable time on issues that some outside observers say other judges likely would have addressed more quickly."

Coley continued, "Some people will say she is an inexperienced judge, that she is up in this satellite facility in Palm Beach County, that she's is dealing with classified documents and that requires special handling. All of that may be accurate. But at the end of the day, she is ignoring settled law, she doesn't appear to have an appreciation for the rules of criminal procedure. And I'll give you an example, Michael: Next month, she is holding a day-long hearing to determine whether or not Jack Smith, the special counsel in the case, has been constitutionally appointed. And as Andrew Weissmann knows, that argument has already been decided. So, she's a MAGA activist. She has a MAGA slip underneath this black robe and her slip is showing.

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Trump appointee Judge Cannon’s latest move amounts to an 'indefinite trial delay': expert - Alternet.org

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in recent years, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has been in hot water over his failure to disclose luxury junkets paid for by far-right billionaire donors. But a new report shows that federal judges across the country are effectively doing the same thing, with little to no accountability.

A Wednesday report by National Public Radio (NPR) found that dozens of federal district and circuit court judges — appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents — are routinely failing to file timely financial disclosure reports as required by law. Ethics experts say that the timely filing of financial disclosure reports is important for plaintiffs and civil defendants, who may want to request a judge recuse themselves if they see that judge attended an event paid for by a special interest group with a case before the court. Those disclosure forms are then posted to every federal court's website.

"It also matters to the public, even if someone never shows up in a courtroom, to believe in the integrity of our judiciary and to trust in the decisions that are issued by judges," University of Houston Law Center professor Renee Knake Jefferson told NPR. "Having disclosures of judicial financial interests goes directly to the public having confidence in the outcomes of the decisions — that they are free of any bias or influence."

"The public has a right to know whether or not its top legal officials have any potential conflicts going into hearing cases," said Gabe Roth of the nonprofit group Fix the Court. "Sometimes they're small bore, but a lot of the times they have major national impact."

NPR's Tom Dreisbach and Carrie Johnson reported that despite judges being expected to file a public report disclosing any events they attended in which their costs of participation were covered by an outside entity, many jurists have failed to do so for months or even years.

"That information loses most of its value if it's a year and a half later," said Kedric Payne, who is the senior director of ethics at the anti-corruption watchdog group Campaign Legal Center. "It's just too distant from the potential conflict of interest."

One of the more notable members of the federal judiciary who failed to file timely disclosure reports is U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida, whom former President Donald Trump appointed to the bench in 2020. Cannon — who is overseeing Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case — attended several seminars at a luxury resort in Montana, but didn't post her disclosure forms online until NPR's inquiry. Clerk Angela Noble attributed the late disclosure to "technical issues."

"Any omissions to the website are completely inadvertent," Noble said.

Many of the seminars judges attend are funded by well-heeled far-right groups with extreme ideological agendas. NPR reported that "dozens" of federal judges attended a 2022 event at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School — named for the Ronald Reagan-appointed Supreme Court justice — featuring a speech by European Parliament member Gunnar Beck. Beck is with the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, or AfD) party, which has called for the mass deportation of migrants and refugees.

Millions of Germans have been protesting AfD for months, criticizing the party as a rebirth of the Nazi movement. NPR noted that Beck posted photos of Black families in a social media post he has since deleted, condemning the "Afrikanisierung" ("Africanization") of Germany. He also lamented that Germany's welcoming of immigrants means the country "has no future as an industrial and cultural nation, but it does have a future as a welfare office."

Click here to read NPR's full report.

READ MORE:[Expert: Clarence Thomas could face 'criminal prosecution' by not paying taxes on gifts

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Special counsel Jack Smith is dealing with two very different judges in his federal prosecutions of former President Donald Trump.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, assigned to Smith's election interference case, is the Barack Obama appointee who forcefully wrote that Trump does not enjoy a "divine right of kings." In contrast, Judge Aileen Cannon, the Florida-based Trump appointee assigned to Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents case, has, at times, been a source of frustration to Trump's critics — including Smith, who believes that Cannon has made a "clear error" by deciding to release, in unredacted form, discovery material in the case at the request of Trump and his legal team.

That decision, Smith warned in a court filing, could endanger potential witnesses.

The special counsel wrote, "That discovery material, if publicly docketed in unredacted form as the Court has ordered, would disclose the identities of numerous potential witnesses, along with the substance of the statements they made to the FBI or the grand jury, exposing them to significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment, as has already happened to witnesses, law enforcement agents, judicial officers, and Department of Justice employees whose identities have been disclosed in cases in which defendant Trump is involved."

Newsweek crime/courts reporter Sean O'Driscoll notes that there have been "significant threats to court officials" in other criminal cases against Trump, including Smith and Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference indictments.

"(Smith) said (Cannon's) decision to release the documents to the public was wrong and that Cannon wrongly stated that the government must show a compelling interest in keeping documents private," O'Driscoll explains. "Smith wrote that this standard does not apply to discovery documents."

Discovery is the process in which attorneys on opposing sides in a case must share evidence.

*Read Newsweek's full report at this link.

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Legal experts: 'Compromised' Judge Cannon is 'slow-walking' trial of 'benefactor' Trump - Alternet.org 1 24

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Judge Cannon’s latest Trump trial stalling tactic 'not credible': legal expert - Alternet.org

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https://www.alternet.org/Frontpage-feature/aileen-cannon-2661174241/

federal judge whose highly-controversial rulings favoring Donald Trump were derided by legal experts and judges on a higher court, has been initially assigned to the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s criminal case against the ex-president, who appointed her to the bench three years ago.

Judge Aileen Cannon, known for agreeing to Trump’s request by assigning a special master to review the entirety of federal government documents the FBI retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last summer during the execution of a search and seizure warrant will, at least for now, oversee the government’s case allegedly charging Donald Trump with seven different felony categories in its classified documents probe, according to ABC News.

“The summons sent to former President Donald Trump and his legal team late Thursday indicates that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will be assigned to oversee his case, at least initially, according to sources briefed on the matter,” ABC News reports.

“Cannon’s apparent assignment would add yet another unprecedented wrinkle to a case involving the first federal charges against a former president: Trump appointed Cannon to the federal bench in 2019, meaning that, if Trump is ultimately convicted, she would be responsible for determining the sentence – which may include prison time – for the man who elevated her to the role.”

Cannon, agreeing to Trump’s request to appoint a special master last September, also halted the Dept. of Justice’s use of those materials, which included at least one hundred classified documents, in its criminal investigation into Trump.

Harvard University professor emeritus of constitutional law, Laurence Tribe, called Judge Cannon’s special master decision “utterly lawless,” and said: “She has disgraced her position as an Article III judge.”

ABC News notes that “Legal experts [had] accused Cannon of handing Trump a series of head-scratching victories over the course of those proceedings,” and added, “Cannon’s order was ultimately thrown out in its entirety by an 11th Circuit Court of appeals panel, which found she overstepped in exercising her jurisdiction in the probe.”

The 11th Circuit issued a scathing rebuke of Judge’ Cannon’s decision to appoint the special master. One week later, without explanation or reasoning, she overruled the special master’s decision and extended deadlines – decisions which favored Donald Trump.

Cannon is not the only judge whose name appears on the summons.

“In addition to Cannon, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s name also appeared on the summons sent to Trump on Thursday, the sources said,” ABC adds. “Reinhart, who was sworn in as a magistrate judge in 2018, is also familiar with the proceedings against Trump: he signed off on the initial search warrant of Mar-a-Lago last year and later ruled to unseal the search affidavit – decisions that made him the target of antisemitic jabs on the internet.”

A federal judge whose highly-controversial rulings favoring Donald Trump were derided by legal experts and judges on a higher court, has been initially assigned to the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s criminal case against the ex-president, who appointed her to the bench three years ago.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Biography

Cannon earned a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University, and a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from theUniversity of Michigan Law School.She began her legal career as a law clerk to Judge Steven Colloton of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Cannon worked as an associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.^[2] Cannon has been a member of the Federalist Society since 2005.^[1]^

Federal judicial service

On April 29, 2020, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Cannon to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.^[2] On May 21, 2020, her nomination was sent to the United States Senate. She has been nominated to the seat vacated by Judge Kenneth Marra, who assumed senior status on August 1, 2017.^[3] A hearing on her nomination before the Senate Judiciary Committee was held on July 29, 2020.^[4] On September 17, 2020, her nomination was reported out of committee by a 16–6 vote.^[5] On November 12, 2020, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a 56–21 vote.^[6] She received her judicial commission on November 13, 2020.

Notable cases

Cannon is hearing the case of Trump v. U.S., case number 9:22-cv-81294, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.^[7] Former U.S. President Donald Trump is asking the court to appoint a special master to review the materials taken from Trump's home in the August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

References

^ ^Jump up to:^a^ ^b^ ^United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary: Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees: Aileen Cannon
Jump up to:^a^ b ^"President Donald J. Trump Announces Judicial Nominees". whitehouse.gov. April 29, 2020. Retrieved April 29, 2020 – via National Archives. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
"Ten Nominations Sent to the Senate", The White House, May 21, 2020
Nominations for July 29, 2020
Results of Executive Business Meeting – September 17, 2020, Senate Judiciary Committee
"On the Nomination (Confirmation: Aileen Mercedes Cannon, of Florida, to be U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida)" United States Senate, November 12, 2020
Crolina Bolado, “Fla. Judge Tells Trump To Substantiate Special Master Bid”, Law360, 23 August 2022.

External links

Aileen Cannon at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

preceded by

Kenneth Marra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Marra)

Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Southern_District_of_Florida)

2020–present

Categories:

active district judges of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals

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ggl 2 25

[### Judge Cannon Is Hiding a Far-Right Lecture Circuit

The New Republic

https://newrepublic.com › breaking-news](https://newrepublic.com/post/186101/aileen-cannon-secret-right-wing-links-trump)

Sep 18, 2024 — The judge presiding over Donald Trump's classified documents case has failed to disclose multiple speaking appearances. Judge Aileen Cannon.

[### Aileen Cannon

Ballotpedia

https://ballotpedia.org › Aileen_Cannon](https://ballotpedia.org/Aileen_Cannon)

Aileen Mercedes Cannon is a judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She was nominated by President Donald Trump (R)

---

duck 8 22

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Aileen_Cannon

Aileen Cannon - Wikipedia

Aileen Mercedes Cannon (born 1981) [1] is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida . Contents 1 Biography 2 Federal judicial service 3 Notable cases 4 References 5 External links Biography [ edit]

https://www.flsd.uscourts.gov › content › judge-aileen-m-cannon

Judge Aileen M. Cannon | Southern District of Florida | United States ...

Judge Aileen M. Cannon . Alto Lee Adams, Sr. United States Courthouse 101 South U.S. Highway 1 ... (772) 467-2340 Judge Tabs. Communication. Email address (for proposed orders or jury instructions): cannon@flsd.uscourts.gov. Civil Procedures. Exhibit List Template. Trial Plan Template. District Judges; Magistrate Judges; Duty Judge Assignment ...

https://:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{nypost.com ›:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}: :{2022 › 08 › 28 › judge-supports-special-master-to-review-trump-mar-a-lago-docs

Judge supports special master to review Trump Mar-a-Lago docs

TodayUS District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, cautioned that the order issued Saturday should not be "construed as a final determination" on the former president's...

https://ballotpedia.org › Aileen_Cannon

Aileen Cannon - Ballotpedia

Aileen Mercedes Cannon is a judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She was nominated by President Donald Trump (R) on May 21, 2020, and confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 56-21 on November 12, 2020. [1] To see a full list of judges appointed by Donald Trump, click here .

https://wikitrusted.com › aileen-cannon-wikipedia

Aileen Cannon Wiki, Biography, Age, Career, Relationship, Net Worth ...

Jul 25, 2021Aileen Cannon, better known by her family name Aileen Mercedes Cannon, is a popular American lawyer. Born on 1981 in United States, Aileen Cannon started her career as lawyer . she is one of famous lawyer with the age 39 years old group. We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous lawyer

https://ussanews.com › 2022 › 08 › 27 › judge-aileen-cannon-intends-to-appoint-special-master-to-review-mar-a-lago-docs

Judge Aileen Cannon intends to appoint Special Master to Review Mar-a ...

1 day agoPosted on August 27, 2022 by Constitutional Nobody Florida Judge Aileen Cannon intends to appoint Special Master to Review Mar-a-Lago docs. Cannon indicated that she intends to appoint a special master to oversee the review of evidence obtained by the FBI in their Mar-a-Largo raid.

https://www.cnbc.com › 2022 › 08 › 23 › judge-orders-trump-to-give-details-about-mar-a-lago-warrant-lawsuit.html

aileen cannon judge

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