U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon seems to be “getting lost” in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, former Republican Judge John E. Jones III told CNN‘s Boris Sanchez on Friday.
In June 2023, Trump, the presumptive GOP 2024 presidential nominee, was indicted by the Department of Justice, accused of mishandling classified documents upon leaving the White House in 2021 and of obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. Trump’s indictment came after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all 40 felony charges, which include allegations of Espionage Act violations, and claims the case against him is politically motivated.
In an attempt to get the charges thrown out, Trump’s legal team has argued that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith to prosecute the case is invalid, given that Garland doesn’t have the legal authority to appoint someone as special counsel who hasn’t been approved by the Senate. Smith’s team rebuked the argument, calling it “unsound.” A hearing on the matter is taking place today.
Appearing on CNN News Central Friday afternoon, Jones, now president of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, criticized Cannon for not being decisive and dragging out pretrial proceedings.
“In this sort of unprecedented case against the former president, wouldn’t you want a judge that is deliberate, that is meticulous, that goes over every detail?” Sanchez asked.
Jones replied: “Well, you can be deliberate and you can go over every detail, and that’s what you’re supposed to do as a jurist, and not take forever to do it.”
He continued: “Remember, [Cannon’s] got chambers full of really bright law clerks who can help her at every step of the way. You have to be decisive, Boris. I mean, that’s what you get paid to do as a judge. The time does not mean that a particular judge is doing all the things that are necessary to be an exemplary jurist.”
Jones said Cannon should delegate some of her work to colleagues, as she is getting too much into the weeds.
“And, in this case, she seems to be getting lost in minutiae and things that she can wrap up. There are a lot of motions that are out in this case,” Jones said. “What I would do is, I would hand them to U.S. magistrate judges, who are there actually to help judges move the freight, so to speak. And she hasn’t sent one of them to a magistrate judge, which is really hornbook judging, in the sort of trade of federal judging.”
Cannon, appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020, has been criticized as being too favorable toward Trump in pretrial proceedings, with some claiming she showed bias when she postponed his trial indefinitely in March. She has also been called inexperienced and overwhelmed by the case.
Newsweek reached out to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida via email for comment from Cannon on Friday.
Jones on Friday morning also appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, calling Cannon’s handling of pretrial proceedings, including a lack of a set trial date, “judicial malpractice.”
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