The same Donald Trump-appointed federal judge who went out of her way to slow down the federal investigation into the former president’s mishandling of classified records has been selected to initially oversee the criminal case filed against him this week, according to a source briefed on the situation.
The summons sent to Trump’s lawyers on Thursday night indicated that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has been assigned to the case, this person told The Daily Beast. That places her in a unique position to deal with an indictment that charges Trump with seven counts related to the way he hoarded national defense information at his Florida oceanside estate of Mar-a-Lago and then repeatedly refused to return them to the National Archives when requested.
The development is a stark and sobering turn for the Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors because Cannon is a MAGA-friendly judge who has already shown a conspicuous tendency to issue orders that violate judicial norms—all to appease the president who appointed her in his final months in office.
The Incredible Mystery of How Trump Got Judge Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago Case
Cannon is already intimately familiar with the investigation, given that she issued bizarre rulings that needlessly put in place a “special master” to review the files seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago last year. Her decision significantly slowed down the investigation because it totally halted special agents from reviewing evidence that was already in their possession.
Her comments in court and subsequent rulings during the early stages of the investigation prompted legal scholars to raise questions about her participation in the case.
Cannon inserted herself in the FBI’s investigation only after Trump filed a lawsuit challenging the seizure of documents at Mar-a-Lago. A review of court logs by The Daily Beast indicated that Trump’s lawyers managed to overcome the local court district’s random judicial assignment “wheel” and engaged in what’s known as forum shopping by timing the lawsuit in order to get her on the case—a fact that was later confirmed by a person familiar with the situation. Her dubious plan to slow down the investigation with a special master review was struck down by an appeals court in December.
And Trump seems well aware of his judge’s loyalties, evidenced by the way his lawyers previously tried to file a mind-boggling lawsuit against Hillary Clinton in Cannon’s satellite courthouse at the far northern edge of the judicial district—where she’s the only judge around. The misadventure failed when the district’s assignment program kicked the case to another judge, who later called out Trump’s team on their brazen attempt to game the judicial system.
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