Jack Smith faces long odds getting Aileen Cannon booted from docs case: expert
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Donald Trump's documents case this week, leading some to believe that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals would swoop in and not only reinstate the case, but remove Cannon from overseeing it.
CNN legal reporter Tierney Sneed consulted with "a lawyer who literally wrote a book on the 11th Circuit criminal jurisprudence," and she she wrote on X the chances of removing Cannon from the case were slim.
In a piece for CNN.com, Sneed spoke with Don Samuel, author of "Eleventh Circuit Criminal Handbook," who described the difficulties in having Cannon removed.
Never has there been such a significant case involving classified documents taken and by a president who refused to return them.
"On the occasions that a judge has been removed from a case by the 11th Circuit, it’s often because the judge has heard evidence or a sentencing recommendation that shouldn’t have been heard," Sneed wrote, speaking to Samuel.
"Or it has happened when the judge has 'repeatedly' refused to comply with the appeals court’s instructions on a particular issue in a case," Samuel told her, according to the report. “But reassignment just because the district judge made an erroneous decision? That is virtually unheard of.”
Cannon has delayed the Trump trial, refused to rule on motions, made two decisions overturned by the 11th Circuit, and in the past, her colleagues implored her to pass the case off to someone with more experience.
Two experienced colleagues on the federal bench in Florida, including the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida, Cecilia M. Altonaga, asked Cannon to pass, confirmed two sources who spoke to the New York Times.
"She has broken, according to lawyers who operate there, with a general practice of federal judges in the Southern District of Florida of delegating some pretrial motions to a magistrate — in this instance, Judge Bruce E. Reinhart," the newspaper added. "While he is subordinate to her, Judge Reinhart is an older and much more experienced jurist. In 2022, he was the one who signed off on an F.B.I. warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club and residence in Florida, for highly sensitive government files that Mr. Trump kept after leaving office."
Sneed spoke to Jon May, another criminal defense lawyer in Florida, who called Cannon's dismissal "wrong" but "not bonkers."
“I don’t think this rises to the level of an order that the court would necessitate reassignment to another judge,” he said.
National security lawyer Bradley Moss agreed, noting, "I am skeptical, as I see others like @secretsandlaws also are, that Smith will even try for that."