Judge Aileen Cannon, the Donald Trump appointee assigned to special counsel Jack Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents indictment, has drawn widespread criticism for her handling of the case.
Cannon has repeatedly delayed the trial, and Ty Cobb — a former Trump White House lawyer turned Trump critic — has attacked her for showing a "palpable bias" in Trump's favor.
Trump ally Roger Stone, according to The New Republic's Hafiz Rashid, has implied that Cannon is a staunch Trump loyalist. And the New York Times is reporting that two of Cannon's "more experienced colleagues" urged her to "pass up" the case after it was assigned to her in June 2023.
Rashid notes that liberal filmmaker Lauren Windsor secretly recorded Stone during a March 19 event at Mar-a-Lago. And he commented, "We are beating them. I think the judge is on the verge of dismissing the charges against him in Florida."
Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance, known for her work as a legal analyst for MSNBC, discussed Stone's comments in her June 20 SubStack column.
Vance wrote, "To the extent Stone is insinuating something more sinister, that they have judges in their pocket, that's entirely different, entirely wrong."
The former federal prosecutor also said of Stone, "Perhaps he's just making it up when he says Judge Cannon will soon dismiss the case against Donald Trump and that they have other judges available during the election. But given his background and history, it would be foolish not to be concerned."
READ MORE:Judge Cannon got so many complaints an appeals court cut them off
According to New York Times reporters Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer, one of the federal judges who approached Cannon in 2023 and urged her to "decline the high-profile" Mar-a-Lago documents case was Cecilia M. Altonaga.
"But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wanted to keep the case and refused the judges' entreaties," Savage and Feuer report. "Her assignment drew attention because she has scant trial experience and had previously shown unusual favor to Mr. Trump by intervening in a way that helped him in the criminal investigation that led to his indictment, only to be reversed in a sharply critical rebuke by a conservative appeals court panel."
The Times journalists add, "The extraordinary and previously undisclosed effort by Judge Cannon's colleagues to persuade her to step aside adds another dimension to the increasing criticism of how she has gone on to handle the case."
Rashid notes the Times' reporting in his New Republic article.
Rashid observes, "Stone's words, if he is hinting at Cannon working with Trump, would seemingly be corroborated by a Thursday New York Times report revealing that the Trump-appointed judge was urged by senior federal judges to hand off Trump's classified documents case to other judges with more experience, who didn’t have previous involvement interfering in the case, as Cannon had. Cecilia Altonaga, the chief U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Florida and Cannon's superior, even reached out to Cannon and told her taking the case would be 'bad optics.'"
READ MORE:Judge Cannon slammed for expanding 'absurd' hearing on Smith removal request
Read Hafiz Rashid's full article for The New Republic at this link and the New York Times' report here (subscription required).
