The federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump‘s classified documents case has been dismissed as a “petty partisan prima donna” by ex-Trump lawyer Ty Cobb.
A report published by The New York Times on Thursday claimed that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who faced heavy criticism over a series of rulings that seem to favor the former president, had refused to recuse herself from the documents case despite receiving advice to do so from two “more experienced” federal judges in Florida.
Cobb, who served on Trump’s legal team while he was in the White House during 2017 and 2018, denounced Cannon during a CNN interview on Thursday night for being “slow on purpose” in moving forward with the documents case—which would almost certainly be dismissed if Trump’s bid to regain the presidency in the November election is successful.
The former Trump lawyer went on to suggest that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals might eventually force Cannon off the case if she rules in the former president’s favor in impending hearings on a motion claiming that Special Counsel Jack Smith is a “campaign surrogate” for President Joe Biden.
“The 11th Circuit could make her step aside,” Cobb told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “The worst thing that could happen to her is that she actually does rule for Trump on this, because that would go to the 11th Circuit. And then, I think this petty partisan prima donna would be put in her place and they would remove her.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where Cannon serves, via email on Thursday night.
The two judges who The New York Times claimed had urged Cannon to recuse herself from the Trump case included her own court’s Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga, who reportedly warned that it would be “bad optics” for Cannon to remain on the case in light of her handling of hearings concerning the August 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago.
The 11th Circuit Appeals Court accused Cannon of attempting to help Trump with “a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” by ruling on the former president’s side in legal maneuverings over the documents seized from his South Florida home.
The documents were later used in Smith’s documents investigation, which led to Trump being indicted on dozens of federal felony charges in Miami. Cannon was randomly assigned to oversee the case.
While the Times report on Cannon being urged to recuse herself was based on anonymous sources and cannot be independently verified by Newsweek, legal experts have suggested that federal judges urging a colleague to step aside is highly unusual.
Former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi told Newsweek earlier on Thursday that it was “unheard of” for judges to ask another judge to step back from a case, while adding that “it is abundantly clear that Judge Aileen has appeared to have lost all sense of objectivity in this matter.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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