Aileen Cannon just keep manuevering to help Donald Trump, who appointed her to the Federal bench….
This effort has her trying to set up telling a jury that instead to ruling on the case itself?
They could freelance and rule that Trump should NOT even be in the case.….
Some experts are also beginning to think Cannon IS in over her head AND trying help the ex-President….
Two and a half weeks after holding a hearing to pick a trial date in the classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump, Judge Aileen M. Cannon still has not decided when the proceeding will begin.
Part of the problem is the case itself, which is inherently complex.
But Judge Cannon, who has been on the bench for only four years, has done herself no favors by allowing a logjam of unresolved issues to build up on her docket. That pileup appears to have kept her from reaching a prompt decision on the timing of the case even though the defense and prosecution have both informed her that they believe the trial can start this summer.
While the lack of a trial date is arguably the most important issue pending before her, it is one of several things that Judge Cannon has done, or not done, that have stirred concern about her decision-making.
On Monday night, for instance, she issued a curious order asking Mr. Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to send her dueling jury instructions about two of the former president’s defenses in the case. She had already rejected one of them and seemingly rebuffed the other at a hearing last week.
Her interest in jury issues was somewhat strange because it came before she had decided when the trial would start. But it was doubly unusual because it seemed to embrace one of Mr. Trump’s most brazen defenses, leaving open the possibility that she could let the charges go to trial and then move to acquit the former president near the end of the proceeding by declaring that the government had failed to prove its case.
Even a seasoned jurist might have trouble laying out the timeline for a case requiring intricate litigation involving how to handle the classified material Mr. Trump is charged with taking. It would also be a challenge for any judge to adjust that schedule to his busy campaign calendar and his obligations to attend proceedings in his three other criminal cases.
Still, some legal experts said the slow pace of Judge Cannon’s decision-making and the confusion accompanying her conduct of the proceeding were indications of Judge Cannon’s inexperience and the ways in which Mr. Trump’s lawyers have been able to capitalize on it.
Judge Cannon, 43, was nominated to the federal bench by Mr. Trump in the final months of his term. She had been a federal prosecutor before that, mostly handling appellate matters. At the time she was assigned to oversee the classified documents case last year, she had handled only four criminal cases that had gone to trial.
“Based on what we know about her professional biography, this judge is completely inexperienced with complex criminal litigation, and this is a case in which complexity is inherent because of the national security aspects,” said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Duke University….