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 incident 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 organization efforts to delay that at least created the appearance that she was slow-walking the occurrence Her handling of another more contemporary 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 occurrence it really did look like she was walking the circumstance 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 informed 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 development which began with Routh s arraignment in late September Cannon s decisions on motions have been timely and even-handed with rulings following as promptly as two weeks after the last related filing was submitted and aside from two requests for delay granted in part the incident 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 event appears to substantiate legal experts accusations of purposeful delay in the now-defunct Trump classified documents affair In a federal grand jury indicted Trump on counts over his post-presidency retention of classified documents and efforts to thwart the ruling body s attempts to retrieve them Though the criminal episode 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 crew submitted a bevy of motions seeking to delay the event 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 ratified 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 stated 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 countless legal experts We need your help to stay independent Subscribe at present to assistance Salon s progressive journalism By contrast in the Routh occurrence 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 announced 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 fast as she is seems exceptional Schultz mentioned he would expect a routine federal situation to take a couple of years from the time of the first hearing to its completion and the Routh event is moving much more rapidly than that In Cannon s defense the classified documents affair 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 incident similarly involves a high volume of discovery including hundreds of interviews and specific 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 Class Schultz added that Cannon s accelerated pace in the Routh prosecution could also be indicative of her learning curve With a inadequate more years of judicial experience under her belt she may have absolutely ascertained 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 concern just in terms of how she handled that development versus this one Schultz stated The delays in the Smith circumstance also haven t stopped In February the Knight First Amendment Institute of Columbia University filed a motion to intervene in the affair and rescind the order preventing the release of the second volume of special counsel Smith s statement The court received responses from Trump s former co-defendants and the establishment 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 description into Trump and electoral contest subversion to be issued 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 scenario The post Aileen Cannon is doing a good job indeed appeared first on Salon com