Experts, ex-officials want Judge Aileen Cannon removed from Trump classified documents case

A series of ex-government officials, law professors, and democracy groups are calling for Judge Aileen Cannon's removal from the classified documents criminal case against former President Donald Trump, based on decisions they say have created the appearance of bias.

The Cannon-naysayers include former Republican Missouri Rep. Tom Coleman, former Republican New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, and several former Republican presidential administration officials. They want the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which is hearing special counsel Jack Smith's appeal after Cannon dismissed the case, to listen to their arguments for not just reversing her decision, but also reassigning the case to a different judge.

In a brief submitted Tuesday by government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and others, they essentially accuse Cannon of suggesting through her rulings that she doesn't believe former presidents are equal under the law.

"Her rulings and other conduct create the appearance of an unshakeable conviction that subjecting a former president to ordinary criminal procedures represents an intolerable affront to his dignity," they wrote.

Cannon, who was appointed by Trump. ruled on July 15 that Smith's appointment as special counsel by US Attorney General Merrick Garland was unlawful and therefore the entire case charging Trump with mishandling classified documents needed to be thrown out.

The ruling deviated from the rulings of every other court to consider the issue after both Democratic and Republican administrations appointed special and independent counsels to oversee politically sensitive investigations with greater independence. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence in the high court's July 1 presidential immunity ruling that questioned the lawfulness of special counsels.

'Pattern of unsupportable decisions'

In one brief, which Coleman and Whitman signed onto along with other ex-officials and democracy-focused nonprofit State Democracy Defenders Action, Cannon is accused of engaging in a "pattern of unsupportable decisions" that created the appearance of bias. The critics in that brief, which urged the 11th Circuit to reassign the case to a different judge, pointed specifically to Cannon's decision to dismiss the case and an earlier ruling that temporarily blocked investigators from examining documents seized from Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.

The 11th Circuit overturned the earlier ruling in a sharply-worded 2022 decision, calling it "a radical reordering of our caselaw" and a violation of "bedrock separation-of-powers limitations."

The second brief was submitted Tuesday by CREW along with former federal Judge Nancy Gertner and two law professors who have written on judicial ethics and conduct, New York University's Stephen Gillers and Hofstra University's James J. Sample.

That group targeted not just the two rulings highlighted in the first brief, but also the nearly a year that they said Cannon spent stalling the case by offering hearings for "nearly every theory that Trump’s counsel could conjure up," before hastily dismissing the case following Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' July 1 legal aside.

It's not the first time Cannon's oversight of the case has come under fire.

Cannon rejected suggestions from two other judges to step away from the case when it was first assigned to her, according to a New York Times report. George W. Bush appointee and the chief judge for Cannon's Southern District of Florida federal court, Cecilia Altonaga, told Cannon it would look bad for her to oversee a trial in the case after the controversy around her overturned ruling hampering investigators.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ex-officials want Judge Aileen Cannon taken off Trump documents case