According to a source with knowledge of the situation, the criminal case filed against the former president this week will initially be overseen by the same federal judge appointed by Donald Trump who went out of her way to slow down the federal investigation into the former president’s mishandling of classified records.
This insider told The Daily Beast that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has been assigned to the case, as evidenced by the summons given to Trump’s attorneys on Thursday night. As such, she is in a particularly advantageous position to deal with the seven counts of an indictment against Trump for his alleged failure to comply with requests from the National Archives to return classified documents he had kept at his oceanfront resort in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.
Because Cannon is a supporter of the Make America Great Again movement and has already demonstrated a striking propensity to issue orders that violate judicial norms—all to please the president who appointed her in his final months in office—this development is a stark and sobering turn for Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors at the Department of Justice.
Since Cannon made the odd judgments that established the “special master” to evaluate the materials taken by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago last year, she has a deep familiarity with the inquiry. Her choice greatly slowed down the inquiry since special agents were no longer able to reexamine previously gathered material.
During the preliminary phases of the inquiry, her statements in court and subsequent judgements caused legal academics to question her impartiality.
In response to Trump’s legal challenge to the FBI’s document seizure at Mar-a-Lago, Cannon decided to interject herself into the inquiry. A review of court records by The Daily Beast suggested, and a source familiar with the matter confirmed, that Trump’s attorneys circumvented the local court district’s random judicial assignment “wheel” and engaged in forum shopping in order to get her on the case.
