Judge Aileen Cannon Could Get Herself Booted From Trump’s Classified Documents Case
For the last few weeks, the legal and political world had its eyes on the spectacle of an effort to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the prosecution of former President Donald Trump, over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Yet over the last six months, a slow-moving car-crash of a case has been unfolding, with a judge who seems committed to protecting the former president at every turn of the road. In that case, Judge Aileen Cannon is adjudicating the prosecution of the former president in the classified documents case in a haphazard way at best. At worst, she is doing all she can to protect the former president from facing the classified documents case before the election, if at all.
Her recent rulings—announcing she is likely to release the names of the government’s witnesses and potentially expose them to ridicule and violence, and a highly questionable decision on how she may instruct the jury should we ever get one—do not just make special counsel Jack Smith’s case more difficult. In a perverse way, the more difficult she makes it, she might actually help Smith in the end.