Cannon lets lawyers with right wing ties back Trump's classified docs dismissal demand

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon will allow a number of outside parties with ties to a right-wing organization to give arguments during a hearing later this month on whether to throw out former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

According to Lawfare's Anna Bower, Cannon is allowing a trio of attorneys who filed amici — Josh Blackman, Gene Schaerr, and Matthew Seligman — to participate in oral arguments at "the hearing on Defendant Trump's Motion to Dismiss the Indictment Based on the Unlawful Appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith." The hearing will take place on June 21.

All three of these attorneys are constitutional scholars who have participated in events hosted by the Federalist Society, the right-wing legal organization that helped advise Trump on Supreme Court appointments, and whose leader is currently under investigation in Washington, D.C. for possible misuse of nonprofit funding.

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Trump is charged with the unlawful removal and concealment of highly classified national defense information at his South Florida country club.

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Cannon, herself an appointee of Trump, has come under fire for a series of decisions that appear calculated to tilt the proceedings in Trump's favor, one of the most significant being the repeated delay in adjudicating pretrial motions that ultimately led to the case being put on hold indefinitely. She has also repeatedly criticized Smith in her filings for various reasons, and tried to force him to turn over information to Trump's legal team that Smith warned would create a risk of witness tampering.

In recent weeks, the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the appellate division that sits above Cannon, has been deluged with complaints over her conduct from concerned outside citizens. Most of the complaints appear to be tied to the fanbase of former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, who directed the followers of his "Justice Matters" podcast on how to file them.

However, ultra-conservative Chief Judge William Pryor, despite having himself ruled against Cannon's conduct on one occasion, has criticized this "orchestrated campaign" and said he has no cause to remove her from the case at this time.

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