11th Circuit Appeals

see pryor

see aileen cannon

yikes

For the Eleventh Circuit - Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice> (Alabama,Florida, Georgia)

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AN PHOENIX FLA 7 26

“‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’”

That’s how federal judge Mark Walker began his 2022 injunction blocking enforcement of Ron DeSantis’ “Stop Woke Act” in Florida institutions of higher education.

In case you don’t recognize the quotation, it’s from George Orwell’s “1984:” You know, the novel where the Ministry of Truth rewrites history and forbids free enquiry.

Certain words are banned; wrong thinking is punished. Even hearing about disfavored ideas is considered an attack on decency and order.

As defendant in the case, the State of Florida argued (apparently with a straight face) university professors have the right to free speech, sure, but only if the state approves of that speech.

The law forbade teaching anything that explores racial or gender injustice.

You weren’t allowed to say, given how we still struggle to overcome discrimination against minorities, women, and the disabled, that maybe diversity, equity and inclusion programs helped a lot of people; you must embrace color-blindness in all things (because we all know race doesn’t matter in America!); yet, woe betide you if you ever made a white person feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.”

Like many of us teaching in the state university system, the judge was unimpressed.

DeSantis and the legal team from his Ministry of Truth appealed up the food chain to the 11th Circuit, and what do you know?

They lost again.

‘Breathtaking assertion of power’

The majority opinion, by a Trump appointee, is unsparing.

Judge Britt C. Grant wrote, “If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.”

She called the Stop Woke law “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse.”

Naturally, the governor pitched a little hissy fit, taking to social media to say, “State universities are funded by taxpayers and directed by elected officials and their appointees. The state has both a right and a responsibility to ensure instruction at these universities is consistent with the underlying mission and to exclude indoctrination and ideological agendas.”

He called the decision “judicial overreach.”

Let’s talk about gubernatorial overreach. Or, to put it another way, what is this guy’s problem with education?

Is he really that frightened of ideas?

If he and his education appointees are so convinced their positions — slavery had an upside, gender is 100% biological, capitalism is divinely ordained, a woman’s highest destiny is to be a mother, vaccines are unnecessary, climate change isn’t real — are valid, surely they’d welcome testing them with historical records, expert reports, and empirical evidence.

Facts, even.

Reading books by and about, say, gay people, teaching the history of Stonewall, or examining central Supreme Court decisions such as Obergefell v. Hodges, do not mean straight people will somehow become gay, any more than studying Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” will necessarily inspire you to assassinate any official you think has gotten too big for his britches.

Gender studies will not destroy heterosexuality; it’s simply a way to talk about the ways people understand who they are, how they present themselves, how other people see them.

Snowflakes

Universities are supposed to be where you encounter people who aren’t like you, unfamiliar, maybe upsetting, points of view, tricky topics, and ideas your parents don’t approve of.

Intellectual freedom means we should be able to discuss almost anything.

Yet the DeSantis administration act like snowflakes, hypersensitive, unwilling to contemplate anything outside their very white, very Christian, pathetically nationalist, bubble.

DeSantis is especially nervous America’s racial history, trying to outlaw “The 1619 Project,” a brilliant collection of writings about how the arrival of the first slaves on the Virginia shore has informed and shaped our country, shutting down or crippling African American Studies programs.

I guess white people are so used to considering themselves the “real” Americans who had all the good ideas, invented all the good stuff, and “built this country,” the reality that Africa is as central to our identity as Europe is scary.

The governor and his crew seem especially freaked out by the possibility students might encounter Critical Race Theory. Listening to them, you’d think CRT is to blame for everything from high gas prices to the common cold.

CRT is pretty simple: Race is socially constructed (not biological) and racism is not merely a product of individual bias (though that’s part of it) but embedded in our legal, educational, medical, and financial systems.

Say a white person and a Black person commit the same crime. It would make sense if they got the same sentence, right?

But in most cases the Black person will get a longer sentence.

‘The perfect villain’

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank, has repeatedly shown structural racism (conscious or not) in the medical profession means doctors and nurses misdiagnose Black, Latino, and members of other ethnic communities far more often than they do whites, and, unlike with white patients, tend to dismiss their pain.

Infant mortality among people of color is at least twice as high than it is for whites.

There’s nothing sinister or anti-American in acknowledging, as Justice Thurgood Marshall said, the original Constitution was “defective from the start,” given that it upheld slaveholders’ rights in their human property and protected the slave trade.

Slavery was at the heart of our republic since its beginning.

It still reverberates in our culture.

There’s nothing anti-white in pointing this out. The Founders installed in the Constitution ways to amend it, fix social problems, even change American society.

The country is an ongoing project: We’re still striving for that “more perfect union,” and acknowledging the blindingly obvious ways in which our deals don’t match up with our reality is not a heinous assault on patriotism.

CRT was developed by legal scholars, and has long been part of law school curricula. Nobody much noticed it until 2021, when a right-wing activist called Christopher Rufo kicked off a national moral panic.

You might remember Rufo from the 2024 presidential campaign, amplifying J.D. Vance’s lies about Haitians in Ohio eating cats and dogs.

Before that, Rufo had made a name for himself as a warrior against anything he saw as “woke,” especially in higher education.

DeSantis appointed Rufo to New College’s Board of Trustees (he’s since left) to help destroy what once was an admired, creative, and tolerant liberal arts school, labeling any teaching he didn’t like “Critical Race Theory.”

CRT, he said, is “the perfect villain.”

Army of lefties

Having tried to banish CRT along with sociology, the unpleasant parts of American history, the novels of Toni Morrison, and any science that might reveal things are more complicated than they’d like, DeSantis, the various mediocrities running Florida’s Department of Education, and fellow travelers such as Moms for Liberty, have convinced themselves universities are hotbeds of “Marxist indoctrination.”

Apparently, professors — especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences — are not merely “woke,” we’re a bunch of commies, determined to brainwash the Youth of Florida into hollering “Workers of the World Unite!” — assured they have nothing to lose but their chains.

Or something like that.

Alas, all my colleagues and I must be really lousy at indoctrination. I don’t know anybody who’s been successful in producing even one committed Marxist.

But DeSantis et al. are convinced higher education is a plot to produce an army of lefties.

Not that they can produce much evidence of this.

They’re more ideologically rigid than the most committed Trotskyite, and less logical than the American officer who, standing in the ruins of a Vietnamese provincial capital in 1968, told reporter Peter Arnett, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

Maybe the administration’s idea is to destroy higher ed in order to save it.

Hypotheticals

No doubt DeSantis took some comfort from the dissent in the 11th Circuit’s ruling.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, a former member of the Florida Supreme Court, (indeed, a DeSantis appointee and often mentioned as a potential U.S. Supreme Court justice), argues, what if “a professor who says that Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel was ‘exhilarating’ and something to be celebrated and encouraged?”

She goes on to say, “Florida acts well within its authority to curb professorial endorsements of that kind within its own classrooms.”

First of all, if someone were stupid enough to say such a thing, that professor could be disciplined for creating a hostile educational environment.

But taking a hypothetical case of poor judgment and concluding somehow professorial speech must always be equivalent to the views of the state violates the First Amendment.

The First Amendment protects offensive speech — even hate speech.

In George Orwell’s essay “Freedom of the Press,” he writes, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Or to quote again from the majority opinion, the university’s mission is to get students to “puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”

Professors call this “teaching.”

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an 5 26

President Donald Trump lost his appealof a personal lawsuit he launched against former Secretary Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, the Democratic National Committee, the law firm Perkins Coie, LLC and others he blames for the Russia investigation.

Politico's Kyle Cheney reported on Tuesday that the 11th Circuit declined to rehear Trump's case, leaving his only option an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump and lawyer Alina Habba in 2023 were sanctioned $1 million for the "frivolous" lawsuit. Florida has rules that allow defendants to ask that a court decide whether a lawsuit is "bogus," the Associated Press reported.

At the time, U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks wrote in the ruling that Trump has a "pattern of abuse of the courts" for filing such lawsuits specifically for political purposes. He said that the move "undermines the rule of law" and "amounts to obstruction of justice."

"Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose," he wrote.

Chief Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, along with Trump appointee Judge Andrew L. Brasher and Joe Biden appointee Judge Embry Kidd, denied Trump's demand to rehear the case.

They added the detail, "... no judge in regular active service on the Court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing en banc," which means none of the judges had any interest in weighing in on rehearing the matter. On the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, six of the 12 judges were appointed by Trump.

Lawyer Marc Elias commented on BlueSky, "I was a defendant in Trump’s frivolous lawsuit. I did not settle. I did not compromise. I did not stop speaking out. We fought and won."

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AN 3 26

President Donald Trump has lost his appeal in his libel lawsuit against the cable news outlet CNN.

The appeal went before the full panel of judges at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Alabama, Georgia and Florida cases. Trump had specifically asked for the decision be en banc, meaning the full panel would rule on it. The reason may have been that many judges were appointed by Trump himself to the appeals court. Still, the verdict was unanimous, Politico legal reporter Josh Gerstein posted on X.

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2022 as a private citizen after the network used the term "Big Lie" to refer to false claims about fraud around the 2020 election.

The case was thrown out first in 2023 by one of Trump's own appointed district court judges. Trump appealed to the 11th Circuit, where the case was thrown out again. Trump's lawyers then requested that the full panel reconsider, and he was denied there, too.

The one-page response makes it clear that not only did Trump lose the first judge in the district court, but he also lost six of the 12 Trump-appointed judges on the court of appeals.

"The Petition for Rehearing En Banc is DENIED, no judge in regular active service on the Court having requested that the Court be polled on rehearing en banc," the court said.

It's unclear whether Trump will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to silence the use of the phrase "Big Lie" on television, but he has been known to take his lawsuits all the way to top. Justice Clarence Thomas is the Supreme Court Circuit Justice responsible for overseeing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. It means Thomas could review the case and decide whether or not the high court should rule on the matter.

The one major barrier, however, is that Thomas has been "decisive" in First Amendment expression cases, the Free Speech Center said. However, when it comes to the press, Thomas has been a long-time critic of the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, which set a higher bar for public figures to claim libel. Both he and Trump agree on the issue.

Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal and owner Rupert Murdoch personally, the New York Times/Penguin Random House, the BBC, The Des Moines Register, the Pulitizer Prize Board, writer Bob Woodward and his publisher Simon and Schuster, as well as his case against CNN.

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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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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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alternet-lno lnx

Supreme Court delivers massive blow to Mark Meadows

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' mugshot (Photo: Fulton County Sheriff's Office)

Carl GibsonNovember 12, 2024

Despite the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows isn't catching a break from Republican-appointed justices in his own criminal case.

CNN reported Tuesday that Meadows' request to have his Fulton County, Georgia election interference case moved to federal court in Washington, D.C. has been officially denied, meaning the door has closed on his last-ditch effort to move his case out of the Peach State. Meadows had hoped to have his state-level case moved to the federal court, with his attorneys arguing that Meadows' acting on orders from then-President Donald Trump's were part of his official duties as chief of staff.

“This court reiterated that the threat posed by prosecutions against federal officers for actions relating to their federal functions does not evaporate once they leave federal office,” Meadows’ legal team stated in a filing to the Supreme Court this summer. “A White House Chief of Staff facing criminal charges based on actions relating to his work for the president of the United States should not be a close call.”

READ MORE: US appeals court shuts down Mark Meadows' attempt to move GA election interference case

Meadows' argument already fell flat in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, with a three-judge panel denying his petition for an en banc hearing by the full circuit earlier this year. Chief Judge William Pryor previously ruled that Meadows' case should remain in the Georgia state court system, saying "the events giving rise to this criminal action were not related Meadows’ official duties."

Now, Meadows' fate will depend on an Atlanta jury after the Georgia Court of Appeals rules on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue prosecuting the case. Willis — who won her own reelection last week — has previously survived Trump's attempt to have her removed from the case, as his lawyers argued that her romantic relationship with then-special prosecutor Nathan Wade constituted a conflict of interest.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee previously ruled that either Wade or Willis had to step down from their role this summer, prompting Wade to submit his resignation almost immediately following McAfee's decision. But Trump's lawyers successfully appealed that decision to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which is expected to issue its own ruling on whether Willis can remain on the case next spring.

With Trump preparing to enter the White House again in January, Meadows was likely angling for a presidential pardon if his case was moved from state to federal court. But because Trump cannot end state-level investigations with a pardon, both the president-elect and his former chief of staff still have to contend with the Fulton County case regardless of whether Willis remains on the case or a new prosecutor is assigned.

READ MORE: 'No trial until 2025': Political scientist hedges bet on 'untested constitutional theory' in GA case

Trump's attorneys in Georgia had previously argued that his criminal trial should be put on hold until January of 2029 if he were to win the election, saying that the duties of the presidency take precedent over an individual state's prosecution. Judge McAfee has yet to officially reschedule the trial, though it's expected his lawyers will be successful in preventing the case from moving forward until Trump leaves office.

CNN reported that Meadows has already struck out in his attempts to move his Arizona criminal case to federal court, with a judge ruling against him in September. Meadows is facing multiple felony charges in the Grand Canyon State for his alleged attempts to interfere with the 2020 election in the state President Joe Biden narrowly won four years ago.

Click here to read CNN's report in full.

READ MORE: GA reporter: Here's what happens with Trump's Fulton County trial after Fani Willis decision

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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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bench slapped by ?

an 67 24

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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