Criticism of the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case lacks a legal justification, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020, has repeatedly come under fire by liberal commentators and legal analysts for decisions seen as favoring the former president and intentionally slow-walking the case. But legal experts who spoke with the DCNF said she’s simply being fair and following normal procedure.
“Most of the partisan, left-wing criticism against Judge Cannon is not grounded in legal substance and instead is due to their personal dislike of the defendant, President Trump,” said John Shu, a constitutional law expert and legal commentator who served in the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. “Judge Cannon was very well-regarded prior to her joining the bench and a dozen Democrat senators, including staunch liberals like Dianne Feinstein and Pat Leahy, voted in favor of her confirmation.”
Cannon has faced calls to recuse herself throughout the case over decisions perceived as favoring Trump, such as granting his request early on for a special master to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, which the 11th Circuit later reversed.
Tension grew after she issued a March 18 order on jury instructions that appeared to agree with Trump’s argument that the Presidential Records Act gives him unreviewable discretion to designate records in his possession as personal.
Special Counsel Jack Smith slammed the order as based on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise” and urged her to make her decision on the legal theory clear, threatening to appeal if she disagreed with the government’s position. Critics had likewise said it revealed her “bias” and “inexperience.”
Cannon denied on Thursday Trump’s motion to dismiss the case based on the Presidential Records Act, while offering sharp words to special counsel Jack Smith for demanding she finalize the jury instructions, a request she said was “unprecedented and unjust.” She wrote that the order on jury instructions “should not be misconstrued as declaring a final definition on any essential element or asserted defense in this case.”
Criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor William Shipley told the DCNF her handling of the jury instructions is in the “normal course” — not unusual or a sign of inexperience.