Aileen Cannon is doing a good job, actually

A year removed from its dismissal in the U S District Court for the Southern District of Florida President Donald Trump s classified documents matter is little more than a distant memory What stands out however was how the prosecution moved at a snail s pace facilitated by U S District Judge Aileen Cannon s drawn-out deadlines and tolerance of Trump gang efforts to delay that at least created the appearance that she was slow-walking the situation Her handling of another more fresh Trump-related legal matter however suggests that she is capable of handling complex cases promptly and efficiently When you go back to the Mar-a-Lago documents circumstance it really did look like she was walking the scenario slow was giving Trump absolutely every benefit of the doubt that she could give in terms of his lawyers David Schultz a Hamline University professor of legal studies and political science advised Salon But Cannon s handling of the prosecution of Trump s would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh is proceeding at a quite different pace In that scenario which began with Routh s arraignment in late September Cannon s decisions on motions have been timely and even-handed with rulings following as rapidly as two weeks after the last related filing was submitted and aside from two requests for delay granted in part the matter progressing on time for its Sept trial date Related Supreme Court bends again to Trump s will Taken together Cannon s handling of the Routh situation appears to substantiate legal experts accusations of purposeful delay in the now-defunct Trump classified documents event In a federal grand jury indicted Trump on counts over his post-presidency retention of classified documents and efforts to thwart the leadership s attempts to retrieve them Though the criminal situation against Trump and two co-defendants started with consistent court dates and filing deadlines it would eventually grind to a near-halt as Trump s legal association submitted a bevy of motions seeking to delay the occurrence and Cannon herself a Trump appointee entertained them The prosecution dragged on in its pre-trial evidence sharing period with Cannon striking the trial date from the calendar altogether in May on account of accumulating motions she had yet to rule on It also struck several legal experts as strange and then alarming that she was considering questionable Trump legal arguments such as the notion that he could designate classified records his personal property under the Presidential Records Act or requesting that the parties submit proposed jury instructions on the matter well before discovery had gotten anywhere close to completion Normally you don t talk about jury instructions until well into trial and we don t have a trial date not a established trial date yet So the fact that she s entertaining this nonsense number one doing it when she s doing it well before trial and refusing to issue a final ruling on it it s just either bizarre or just outright biased depending on your view of things former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani advised Salon last April Toward the end of the prosecution s life Cannon even allocated two days to a hearing on whether Smith s appointment was invalid also allowing for outside counsel to argue on Trump s behalf much to the dismay of a multitude of legal experts We need your help to stay independent Subscribe the present day to assistance Salon s progressive journalism By contrast in the Routh incident she s proceeding the way you would normally expect a district court judge to proceed on criminal matters except it seems to be even more accelerated Schultz revealed in a phone interview noting that federal judges have notoriously heavy dockets The fact that she s moving this one in what appears to be as briskly as she is seems uncommon Schultz declared he would expect a routine federal event to take a couple of years from the time of the first hearing to its completion and the Routh matter is moving much more rapidly than that In Cannon s defense the classified documents matter one of the first she heard after being appointed to the bench was complicated in both its scope and the sensitive nature of the materials at issue Federal agents obtained dozens of boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago including hundreds of pages of classified materials ranging in sensitivity that would need to be reviewed in a specified area with a court-appointed handler during discovery Still the Routh situation similarly involves a high volume of discovery including hundreds of interviews and certain level of classified information as evidenced by the Classified Information Procedures Act proceedings in the docket Earlier this week Routh also requested a hearing on his proposal to terminate his counsel and represent himself at trial and Cannon held it just days later Start your day with essential news from Salon Sign up for our free morning newsletter Crash Discipline Schultz added that Cannon s accelerated pace in the Routh prosecution could also be indicative of her learning curve With a sparse more years of judicial experience under her belt she may have completely determined her rhythm in deciding on motions setting trial schedules and maintaining them But that s him playing devil s advocate I still think there is this at the very least appearance issue just in terms of how she handled that situation versus this one Schultz commented The delays in the Smith scenario also haven t stopped In February the Knight First Amendment Institute of Columbia University filed a motion to intervene in the circumstance and rescind the order preventing the release of the second volume of special counsel Smith s assessment The court received responses from Trump s former co-defendants and the regime as well as the reply from the Knight Institute by the end of March But more than days from the filing date of the reply the institute has yet to receive a ruling from Cannon according to its latest filing on Monday For her part Cannon previously denied in part an expedited motion from nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight seeking to intervene in the incident and get clarification or dissolution of that order four days after its submission Read more about Aileen Cannon Jack Smith document into Trump and balloting subversion to be published after Judge Cannon s ruling Judge Aileen Cannon failed to disclose a right-wing junket Watchdog group CREW says Judge Aileen Cannon should be kicked off the Trump documents event The post Aileen Cannon is doing a good job truly appeared first on Salon com