Aileen Cannon Faces Growing Calls to Be Removed Over 'Partisan' Action

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified-documents trial has faced renewed calls to recuse herself from the case after she reprimanded Special Counsel Jack Smith's team for a word count on their legal filings.

Judge Aileen Cannon was appointed to the bench in 2018 by the former president. She has been criticized by legal experts for her response to federal prosecutors urging her not to be "manipulated" by Trump into delaying the federal trial, which is set to begin in May 2024. The frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges in connection to the classified documents case and has repeatedly called the trial a political witch hunt.

Legal experts have told Newsweek that they doubt Cannon will be removed or recuse herself from the trial this far into the proceedings.

"Will Cannon be removed? Smith has to go to the circuit to get a new judge and success in any such effort at this point seems highly improbable," Stephen Gillers, law professor at New York University, said.

Stephen E. Smith, legal professor at Santa Clara University in California, added that the chances of the Department of Justice seeking Cannon's removal is "unlikely to the point of wholly unlikely."

Cannon said in a recent hearing that she was open to moving the classified documents trial as the timing of the other criminal investigations involving Trump may complicate the current schedule.

Smith's team told Cannon that the former president is also trying to delay his federal trial into alleged criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 election and that he has an "overriding interest" in delaying both trials. If Trump wins the 2024 election, he could conceivably pardon himself if found guilty in both federal trials once he enters the White House, or have the cases thrown out all together.

In November 3 court filings, Cannon told the Special Counsel's office that they had violated Local Rule 7.8, which states that an opposing party filing a written response must not exceed 200 words. Smith's filings telling Cannon that Trump was also trying to delay the 2020 election federal trial ran to around 220 words.

"The parties are hereby reminded of the requirements of Local Rule 7.8 on Notices of Supplemental Authority. Except as authorized by Court order, the substantive content of any such notice (or response) may not exceed 200 words and may not be used as a surreply absent leave of Court," Cannon wrote. "Future non-compliant notices or unauthorized filings will be stricken without further notice."

Portrait of Aileen M. Cannon, United States District Judge, Southern District of Florida. She has faced renewed calls to recuse herself from the classified-documents trial involving Donald Trump. Southern District of Florida

Cannon, who was randomly assigned to the classified-documents case, has now faced accusations that she is not suited to oversee the potentially major federal trial involving the former president and that she should remove herself.

In Cannon's defense, she has had to face Trump lawyers arguing over the disclosure of more than 1 million pages of evidence. There was also the added complexity of establishing secure rooms in which both prosecutors and defense lawyers can review the highly sensitive documents found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

While sharing the legal filings written by Cannon, former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann was one of those who said the judge should remove herself from the case. He said the criminal trials involving Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was jailed for tax and bank fraud charges in 2019. Manafort was also convicted of conspiracy against the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct justice for attempting to tamper with witnesses in a separate case in 2018.

"We routinely advised the 2 judges who had the Manafort criminal cases of filings made in the other case. That was an obligation we felt to both judges and a courtesy. Not once were we criticized for doing so," Weissmann posted on X, formerly Twitter.

"Cannon has to be removed whether too novice or too partisan or both," he added.

In response, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman posted on X: "Biased or not, Cannon simply doesn't have game; and she masks it with prickly remonstrations of the government. She needs to go back to judges' school, except there isn't such a place. (yes, I know about the little orientation course, but that's not what I mean.)"

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance also said that Smith's team may "regret not trying to recuse" previously while citing her recent filings.

"I wondered whether Judge Cannon, who has been so unstinting in her criticism of prosecutors, might have some to spare for Trump's lawyers now," Vance wrote in her blog.

"But she did not. Instead, she chastised prosecutors for violating local rules. She didn't show any concern about the Trump lawyers' failure to advise her of the motion they'd made in D.C.," Vance added.

Newsweek has contacted the federal courts in south Florida, where Cannon presides, for comment via email.

Cannon has faced calls to recuse herself from the classified documents case over concerns about her impartiality to Trump, as well as previous decisions that benefited the former president during the proceedings.

These include rulings that meant that Trump would not have to testify under oath why he believes the FBI may have "planted" evidence against him during the August raid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in August 2022. This was an unsubstantiated claim he and his supporters frequently pushed.

Another ruling from Cannon also meant that Trump would not have to state which of the materials recovered from his Florida resort had allegedly been declassified before he left the White House in January 2021. The disputed claim the former president often made as a defense has not been backed up by his lawyers in official court filings.