Left: Aileen M. Cannon speaks remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing (U.S. Senate). Right: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump visits a Chick-fil-A eatery, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Atlanta (AP Photo/Jason Allen).
The decision to dismiss former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case should be reversed, and the Trump-appointed judge who made the decision should be removed due to bias, a federal watchdog group argued in court papers.
Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon should be reassigned if the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses and remands her decision to dismiss the indictment against Trump, according to an amicus brief filed on Tuesday on behalf of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“At every possible opportunity, Judge Cannon has demonstrated her apparent bias in favor of Donald Trump,” said CREW President Noah Bookbinder in a statement announcing the filing. “She has at every stage made this case more difficult than the law mandated, and she then dismissed it on largely unprecedented grounds, delivering a significant win to Trump. Should the Court reverse her decision, it must also ensure that the case is reassigned to allow it to proceed fairly and expeditiously and to help restore the credibility of the federal court system.”
The court document said that if the court reverses Cannon’s ruling in the case, it would be the third time in less than three years that it has had to do so in a “seemingly straightforward case about a former president’s unauthorized possession of government documents.”
“A reasonable member of the public could conclude, as many have, that the dismissal was the culmination of Judge Cannon’s many efforts to undermine and derail the prosecution of this case,” the document said.
Cannon dismissed Trump’s case in July, ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional.
CREW argued that before the case was dismissed, she suggested that some White House files could be permanently withheld from criminal investigators in the Justice Department under executive privilege, called for jury instructions favorable to Trump, and stalled the case until Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ lone concurrence in the presidential immunity case called into question whether Smith’s appointment was legal, then quickly threw out the indictment on the same grounds.
“Judge Cannon was presented with a historic case that will shape how, and if, the most powerful figures in government can be held accountable by the law,” said Bookbinder. “She has repeatedly failed to rise to the occasion. Given her apparent lack of impartiality, the case should not return to her.”
Former U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner Gertner, a senior Harvard Law School lecturer who joined CREW as a friend of the court, told ProPublica that Cannon’s decision was biased — and that it could be upheld by the nation’s highest court.
“And with this Supreme Court, there’s no ceiling,” she told the nonprofit. “All precedents are up for grabs.”
Matt Naham contributed to this report.
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