Dem
51
GOP
49
The New York Times had an interesting story yesterday about Judge Aileen Cannon. According to their reporting, when Cannon was assigned the Trump documents case, she got phone calls from two fellow federal judges. Both of them strongly encouraged her to withdraw from the case and hand it off to a more experienced colleague.
The first judge to contact Cannon, whose name is not known, told her that it would be much better to move the case to Miami's main federal courthouse, as that is where the indicting grand jury sat, and because it has a secured room, so it is already set up to handle classified information. The second judge to contact Cannon was Chief Judge of the Southern District of Florida Cecilia M. Altonaga. Altonaga was a bit more direct, and told Cannon that her handling the trial would be bad optics, in part because she was appointed by Trump and in part because she mishandled the decision about the special master.
Obviously, Cannon ignored her colleagues' advice, making it very clear that she wants to be on this case. There are many reasons we can think of for why Cannon might feel that way:
As the Times notes, Cannon was entirely within her rights to disregard her colleagues' suggestions.
With that said, Special Counsel Jack Smith surely read this story with interest. He now knows there are at least two judges who are above Cannon on the ladder and who don't think she's the right judge for this case. He also knows exactly why they feel that way. Given her continued foot-dragging, not to mention Roger Stone's having blabbed the Trumpers' expectation that Cannon plans to dismiss the case, Smith has to be getting close to filing a motion to have her removed from the case, right? At this point, he's got relatively little to lose. (Z)