Left: Judge Aileen Cannon (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida); Right: special counsel Jack Smith (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
If Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, will he reward Judge Aileen Cannon for throwing out his Mar-a-Lago classified documents prosecution by promoting her to U.S. attorney general and replacing special counsel Jack Smith’s boss Merrick Garland? The latest reporting says that Cannon is on the list of candidates for AG, and defense attorneys for Trump attempted assassination suspect Ryan Routh noticed.
ABC News reported Tuesday that a Trump campaign “Transition Planning: Legal Principals” document lists Cannon second to former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton on a list of potential AGs.
Routh’s federal public defense team — Hector Dopico, Kristy Militello and Renee Sihvola — was paying attention and early Wednesday filed a document in support of an existing motion asking Cannon to recuse herself from the case.
The defense has already argued that Trump “bolstered the perception that the Court is partial in his favor” by “repeatedly” praising Cannon as the “brilliant woman” who “handled a scam” classified documents case and dismissed it on Appointments Clause grounds in July, finding after “careful” study that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed by Garland.
Smith is currently appealing the dismissal but has not requested Cannon’s disqualification, unlike other lawyers who have weighed in on the 11th Circuit docket.
Whether Smith makes that move from here now that it seems Cannon could in the future be in a position to dismantle his case all over again is unknown. What is known, however, is that Routh doesn’t want a Trump-appointed judge lavished with praise overseeing a case that could put the 58-year-old defendant in prison for the rest of his life for allegedly attempting to assassinate Trump as he golfed in September.
Just last week, Routh filed documents seeking Cannon’s recusal. He argued that Cannon’s ability to be impartial in the attempted assassination case can reasonably be questioned since Trump has repeatedly praised her publicly for dismissing his own criminal case and, as a result, she could be a candidate for higher office, perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court.
Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida responded Monday by backing Cannon, writing that Routh did not have a “sufficient legal or factual basis” for the recusal demand and did not “cite any authority mandating recusal in these circumstances[.]”
On Wednesday, the defense told Cannon that the “facts here are unprecedented” and support her stepping aside, but later in the Routh reply was a link to the ABC News story about Cannon’s potential AG candidacy [bolding ours]:
This is not the ordinary situation where a Judge is evaluating an official policy adopted by the President who nominated her. Rather, Mr. Trump is the alleged victim of an assassination attempt; he thus has a personal stake in the outcome. And in the mind of the public, that Mr. Trump appointed Your Honor may add to the appearance of partiality given that he has publicly praised Your Honor for rulings in his earlier case; and were Mr. Trump to become President again, he would have authority to elevate Your Honor to a federal appellate court (including the U.S. Supreme Court) or to high-ranking positions in the Executive Branch. See, e.g., Katherine Faulders, et al., Judge Who Tossed Trump’s Classified Docs Case on List of Proposed Candidates for Attorney General, ABC News (Oct. 22, 2024); Jess Bravin & C. Ryan Barber, Trump Loyalists Push for a Combative Slate of New Judges, Wall St. Journal (Oct. 14, 2024).
The defense also claimed that prosecutors only recently disclosed, albeit not in a public filing, that Cannon is a high school classmate of a member of the prosecution team and that she years later was a guest at his wedding:
Finally, there is one new, additional matter that Mr. Routh must raise. After Mr. Routh filed his motion, the government advised defense counsel for the first time that one member of the prosecution’s team—Christopher Browne of the Justice Department’s National Security Section in Miami—attended high school with Your Honor, and Your Honor attended Mr. Browne’s wedding nine years ago. It is unclear why the government believed that this information was important enough to share with defense counsel but not important enough to include in its response. And it is unclear why, despite hundreds of able prosecutors in this District and around the country, the government elected to staff its team in this high-profile case with a prosecutor who enjoys a longstanding, personal relationship with the presiding judge. In the mind of the public, this fact could further add to the appearance of partiality.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
