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SF Chief Clerk: Aileen Cannon's Appointment to Docs Case is PERMANENT and NOT Temporary. [1]
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Date: 2023-06-11
According to reporting from the New York Times, the clerk for the federal court system for the Southern District of Florida has confirmed two things:
1) The choice was random and not chosen or decided by anyone.
"Under the district court’s procedures, new cases are randomly delegated to a judge who sits in the division where the matter arose or a neighboring one, even if it relates to a previous case.”
In terms of the actual procedure of judges being randomly assigned in the Southern District: as someone who’s covered stories of cases during my writing career, I’ve seen many situations where judges with at least a perceived bias in a particular case were, in fact, randomly assigned, as it’s most often done with software/algorithms and not by individuals. Now, in terms of the DOJ investigating whether there were any shenanigans involved in this assignment, well - I wouldn’t expect it, as an investigation itself would essentially be throwing shade on the entire South Florida court system, which would be a political firestorm.
2) Cannon's assignment to the case is not temporary — she will preside over the entire case.
This information removes any speculation or hope, that Cannon was simply assigned to the arraignment and that another judge would be assigned to the trial. It’s Cannon all the way.
This is obviously a troubling situation for a variety of reasons. In terms of the arguments I’ve seen about “not worrying” about this, according to multiple legal experts and even Trump critics, they seem to be relying on ideas based more on hope than genuine possibility.
A) The possibility of her recusing herself — I wouldn’t expect it. If she did, it would be a self-admittance of “bias” and would be a pretty stunning thing to do. While it’s certainly a possibility that she could turn out to have ethics enough to remove herself from the case, this is the least possible outcome, IMO.
B) The other argument I’ve seen, which is that she could be forcefully recused for “bias”: this is also very likely a stretch, considering that her prior decision was not reversed over direct accusations of bias, but because she had no actual jurisdiction to appoint a Special Master to look at the documents in that particular situation and that her decision was likely based on Trump being a former President. While that smackdown was obviously a severe one, this is likely not nearly enough to forcefully recuse unless the 11th circuit extrapolates her previous behavior to imply that she couldn’t be impartial now.
So, yeah. Barring any shocking behavior or decisions during the course of the trial or a surprise from Cannon, herself, she’s here to stay. And her power over this case in terms of when the trial date will be set, as well as which evidence is allowed to be presented to the jury (and about a hundred other actions she could take) is enormous.
As SLATE pointed out on Friday: yes, she could absolutely sink the entire federal case. And there’s nothing that can be done about it.
One can only hope that Jack Smith and the DOJ have some tricks up their sleeve, here, because the 11th circuit is very likely not going to interfere in this twist of fate.
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