Over 1,000 complaints have flooded into Judge Aileen Cannon's court, seeking her recusal from the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case against former President Donald Trump.
According to CNBC News, "The complaints against Judge Aileen Cannon have come to light amid renewed criticism by some legal observers and Trump opponents that she is slow-walking the criminal case against the former president to ensure it does not go to trial before the presidential election."
The report continues:
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"'Many of the complaints' against Cannon filed with the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals 'request that the Chief Circuit Judge remove her from the classified-documents case and reassign the case to a different judge,' Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in a May 22 order posted on the appeal court’s website."
Pryor went on to say that several of the complaints, which “appear to be part of an orchestrated campaign,” additionally "question the correctness of her rulings or her delays in issuing rulings in the case.”
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He wrote that he does not have proper authority to remove Cannon at this time: “Although many of the complaints allege an improper motive in delaying the case, the allegations are speculative and unsupported by any evidence. The Complaints also do not establish that Judge Cannon was required to recuse herself from the case because she was appointed by then-President Trump.”
Pryor is an arch-conservative judge known for his hard-right beliefs, and who was considered by Trump for nomination to the Supreme Court. However, he has himself ruled against Cannon in the past, sitting on a three-judge panel that slapped down her move to halt the FBI from reviewing classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago pending adjudication by a special master for executive privilege.
Cannon has been broadly accused of a series of rulings and procedural tactics to sabotage the case, which charges Trump with Espionage Act offenses for the unlawful removal of classified national defense information.
She tried to force special counsel Jack Smith to turn over witness information to Trump's defense team that Smith warned would create a risk of witness tampering. She also put the trial on hold indefinitely, citing a huge backlog of pretrial disputes that some legal experts assert she herself helped create by sitting on them for months, and has frequently hectored and criticized Smith in her orders.
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