The roles are reversed. Appointed by Donald Trump, Aileen Cannon will now have to judge him. Drawn by lot to supervise the federal trial of the former president, the magistrate will have a great influence on the procedure. Which is not to everyone’s taste. “Judging someone who gave you your job would be hard on everyone,” said Wendy Schiller, a professor of public policy at Brown University. And when the defendant keeps crying foul by presenting himself as the victim of “persecution”, “this signals to the judge that he is under surveillance”, adds the expert during an exchange with AFP.
Will Aileen Cannon be able to resist these pressures? Those who want to see Donald Trump condemned for his careless handling of White House secrets doubt it. For the British daily FinancialTimes, the profile of the magistrate is a “godsend” for the former American president. Same story with our Belgian neighbors in Evening, who wonders if Aileen Cannon would not be a “Trojan horse” for Trump within the American justice system.
The Republican billionaire gave her a lifetime job as a federal judge just before her defeat in the November 2020 presidential election. She was only 38 at the time, including three years in a law firm and seven in the offices of a Florida federal prosecutor. Since she took office, she has also supervised only four criminal law trials, which have never lasted more than three days, according to Politico. It was in each case a fairly trivial affair.
Born in Colombia and the daughter of a Cuban refugee, Aileen Cannon is notably a member of the Federalist Societya very influential organization in legal circles which has the ear of elected Republicans and advocates a literal reading of the Constitution. She is “a very conservative judge,” notes Thomas Holbrook, professor of political science in Wisconsin. In the American monthly The Atlantictwo South Florida attorneys said they were struck by Cannon’s overt religiosity, which seeped into his court statements.
Above all, Aileen Cannon has already shown great deference to Donald Trump. After the search of his luxury club Mar-a-Lago by the FBI in August 2022, the septuagenarian had taken legal action to prevent prosecutors from using the documents seized. Judge Cannon then inherited the case and gave him part of the reason, citing “the extraordinary circumstances” related to “his former position as President of the United States”.
A judge with decisive powers
She was then disavowed by three magistrates of her court in a decision with an unusually critical tone. “While it is indeed extraordinary to have a search warrant for the home of an ex-president, this should in no way affect our legal analysis,” they wrote. None of this would matter if the judge had only a ceremonial role, which is far from the case. “Even in routine cases, judges have an important and sometimes decisive influence on the procedure,” notes Daniel Richman, professor of law at Columbia University.
Indeed, the judge has several prerogatives such as determining the schedule, accepting or excluding certain evidence. It can weigh in the selection of the jury, can even consider that the case in question has not been proven. And therefore directly acquit Donald Trump. For his part, the former American president wants to drag things out, if possible after the elections scheduled for November 2024.
In addition, Aileen Cannon will decide which material elements can be presented to the jurors. In this file, she could be tempted to exclude damning notes taken on the fly by a lawyer for Donald Trump, in the name of professional secrecy. Finally, she will supervise the choice of jurors who will have to render a unanimous verdict. “She has enormous power in this case…she has wide discretion to do a lot of things,” Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, told MSNBC.
For all these reasons, several voices asked him to recuse himself. “His impartiality is questionable,” former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who investigated suspicions of collusion between Donald Trump and Moscow in 2016, told MSNBC. essential to have an experienced, intelligent and impartial judge, tweeted Michael Bromwich, former inspector general of the Department of Justice. Judge Cannon fails on each of these points. If she has any self-consciousness, she should recuse herself. “
But some of the Democratic lawyers who appeared in Cannon’s courtroom do not share those concerns. They present her as a smarter, more deliberate, and more impartial judge than early criticism of her would suggest. “I think the government should be very happy to have Judge Cannon,” said in The Atlantic Richard Klugh, a Miami defense attorney who dealt with her both as a judge and when she served as a federal prosecutor.
For the moment, the magistrate seems to want to keep the file, in which she has already carried out some formalities. Whatever her conduct, she will be vilified, notes Thomas Holbrook. “As soon as she makes a decision against the former president, it will no longer matter that he nominated her and she will be seen as a traitor” by Republican supporters, he said. Conversely, if she decides in favor of Trump, it will fuel the idea that the judicial system is corrupt. Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance drives the point home, saying that “the public will not trust that she acquit or convict” Trump.