Judge Cannon Knew Precisely What She Was Doing

On Monday, federal district court Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Mar-a-Lago classified documents criminal case facing former President Donald Trump.

Cannon did not rule on the merits of the case itself. The 37 felony charges brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith in June 2023 presented a powerful case that seemed “open and shut.”

Instead, Cannon ruled that Smith’s appointment as a Justice Department special counsel was unconstitutional — the only such ruling by any court, including the Supreme Court, that has considered the same question in numerous cases over decades.

After various moves over many months that delayed the case, Judge Cannon has now ensured the case will not be heard before the election, if ever.

Smith is appealing Cannon’s decision, but the damage has already been done. Trump, if elected in November, will quickly instruct his Attorney General to dismiss the case.

Let’s be real. Judge Cannon knew precisely what she was doing. Her performance in this case has all the appearance of a biased judge out to deep-six the case and give flowers to Trump.

For some observers, Judge Cannon’s performance was an audition for a promotion. Following the case dismissal on Monday, MAGA Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) called her “future Supreme Court Justice Cannon.”

While some have labeled Judge Cannon’s delays of the case the result of inexperience and/or incompetence, Cannon’s performance appears intentional and designed simply to protect Trump.

The slow-walking of the case started when Judge Cannon interfered with the Special Counsel’s development of its case. This led to Judge Cannon being strongly rebuked by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

First, the three-judge appeals panel reversed Cannon’s appointment of a special master to review the classified documents and temporarily suspended the Justice Department’s use of the documents. The panel consisted of three conservative judges: two Trump appointees and one G.W. Bush appointee.

Then in a second case, an 11th Circuit panel again reversed Judge Cannon, stating she abused her discretion when she claimed she had “jurisdiction to block the United States from using lawfully seized records in a criminal investigation.”

The panel ruled that Cannon’s decision violated “clear” law, “would be a radical reordering of our caselaw,” and “would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

At one point, Judge Cannon wrote that Trump’s position as a former President put him in “a league of [his] own.” This, of course, violates a foundational principle in our country that no one, not even a former President, is above the law.

The 11th Circuit forcefully dismissed Cannon’s attempt to “carve out an unprecedented exception in our law for former Presidents.”

Delaying the trial, however, apparently wasn’t enough for Judge Cannon. So, when the opportunity arose, she made an unprecedented decision that Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional and dismissed the entire case.

Cannon’s opinion reeks of Trump bias.

Cannon rejected a core finding made by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Nixon, in 1974, that the Watergate special prosecutor was properly appointed by the Attorney General. Cannon wrongly dismissed the ruling as “dicta” — that is, only a comment not necessary to resolve the case and therefore not binding on her.

Absurdly, to support her opinion, Cannon three times quoted dicta from Justice Clarence Thomas’s self-indulgent concurring opinion in the presidential immunity case. The Thomas concurrence was not joined by any other Justice and had nothing to do with the immunity issue before the Court.

Thomas appears to have written his opinion expressly to guide Cannon and she went for it — hook, line, and sinker.

Judge Cannon in her opinion ignored two important D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rulings that upheld the constitutionality of two different special counsel appointments. Cannon wrote that she wasn’t going to pay attention to decisions from other Circuit Court jurisdictions.

According to former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, Judge Cannon’s “decision to throw out serious national-security criminal charges in the classified documents case against Donald Trump is legally unsupported, ignores decades of precedent, and is deeply dangerous.”

Katyal, who wrote the Justice Department’s regulations for the appointment of special counsels, continued: “We’ve had special counsels and special prosecutors since at least the time of President Ulysses Grant after the Civil War. That is for a simple reason: We need a system to police high-level executive branch wrongdoing, and the system can’t be run by the President and his appointees alone.”

Cannon, by all appearances has shown herself to be a biased judge who ignored the seriousness of the national security case pending before her and went rogue to protect former President Trump.

This was adapted from a piece that appeared in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter that’s published on Thursdays. Read this week’s and recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here to receive your copy each week via email.