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Senior Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are raising concerns about what role Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon will have in handling the case the Department of Justice is bringing against former President Trump. Cannon, a member of the conservative Federalist Society who was confirmed to sit on the district court for the Southern District of Florida shortly after the 2020 election, made headlines last year when she ruled that an independent arbiter must review the 13,000 government records seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August. Her decision was later struck down by a three-judge panel made up from members...

On Friday, MSNBC acted "concerned" over the news that Aileen Cannon was chosen as the judge to oversee the Trump documents case. However, the MSNBC reaction was mild compared to the sheer panic over Cannon in an article published by Slate magazine that same day. Mark Joseph Stern, Slate's senior writer on legal matters sounds like he will spend many sleepless nights over his extreme fear that "Judge Aileen Cannon Can Absolutely Sink the Federal Prosecution of Trump."

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has been assigned, at least for now, to oversee the case stemming from Donald Trump's indictment, a source confirmed to NPR on Friday. Trump appointed Cannon to the bench in 2020, and she is the same judge who ruled in favor of Trump's request to appoint a special master to review documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago last summer, a move that temporarily stopped federal prosecutors from continuing their investigation into the documents.

Trump-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon will reportedly preside over former President Donald Trump’s second indictment, the “Boxes Hoax” case. The summons sent to Trump on Thursday listed Judge Cannon on the summons, people familiar with the summons told the Guardian. ABC News and CNN confirmed the Guardian‘s reporting. Cannon granted Trump a special master during the investigation last year. Breitbart News reported that some left-wing scholars and legal experts were furious, lashing out against Judge Cannon, claiming that she acted out of political motives and was even an accomplice to “obstruction of justice.”

Former President Donald Trump was recorded in 2021 acknowledging that he had kept “secret” military documents from his time in office without first declassifying them. The recording of the 76-year-old’s admission has been obtained by federal prosecutors, who secured an indictment of Trump on charges including willful retention of national defense information after retrieving thousands of documents from his Mar-a-Lago resort. “As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump, 76, said about a classified Pentagon paper outlining a potential military strike on Iran, according to a transcript of the meeting reported by CNN. “Secret. This is secret...

Former president Donald Trump’s legal effort to thwart a Justice Department investigation into classified documents seized from his palatial Palm Beach estate was officially tossed out Monday. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, after being rebuked by a federal appellate court for allowing Trump’s lawsuit to move forward, brought his controversial lawsuit to a halt after the court had ordered her to end it. “This case is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction,” Cannon wrote in a one-page order released Monday. “The Clerk of Court shall close this case.” At the beginning of the month, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in...

A federal judge on Monday dismissed Trump’s case challenging the FBI raid and seizure of documents from Mar-a-Lago. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case after a federal appeals court recently threw out the special master for Trump’s case. In September, Judge Cannon appointed a special master to review the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. Biden’s corrupt Justice Department argued that a special master didn’t have a right to filter out the seized documents. The court blasted Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, and said she erred in appointing Raymond Dearie as a special master to review documents seized...

A federal appeals court on Thursday halted Judge Aileen Cannon’s special master review in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents case. In September, Judge Cannon appointed a special master to review the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. Biden’s corrupt Justice Department argued that a special master didn’t have a right to filter out the seized documents. The court blasted Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, and said she erred in appointing Raymond Dearie as a special master to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. “The law is clear,” the judges wrote. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to...

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Thursday overruled an order by Special Master Raymond Dearie that said former President Donald Trump needed to provide any "final" objections or disputes regarding the items seized by the FBI during its unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago last month. Last week, Dearie asked the Trump team that by no later than Sept. 30 to provide a declaration of affidavit that includes a list of any specific items in the property inventory that they assert were not seized from the premises; a list of items that were seized but to which the description of the...

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday denied the Department of Justice's request for a partial stay of her ruling that enjoined the FBI from using roughly 100 documents seized from Mar-a-Lago with classification markings in its ongoing criminal investigation of Donald Trump -- and mandated they be handed over to a special master for review.Cannon has also appointed Raymond Dearie, senior district judge for the Eastern District of New York, as special master.In a filing last week that amounted to a line-by-line rebuke of Cannon's ruling, DOJ prosecutors wrote that they would seek intervention by the 11th Circuit Court...

The Justice Department and former President Donald Trump's legal team have found rare agreement in a potential candidate to serve as the special master tasked with reviewing the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. Judge Raymond Dearie, whom Trump's legal team put forward, is an acceptable option to serve as the third-party attorney to independently review the seized materials, the Justice Department said in a court filing Monday evening. While it remains unclear when US District Judge Aileen Cannon will decide who will serve as the special master, here's what you need to know about Dearie and the role he could play...

A Texas woman who allegedly left a series of threatening messages on the voicemail of a federal judge overseeing one of former President Donald Trump's legal fights in Florida was arrested last week, according to court documents. Tiffani Shea Gish, of Houston, left three voicemails for Aileen Cannon, a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida who was nominated by Trump in 2020, according to court documents. Cannon is handling the former president's request for a special master to review documents and other items the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago last month. In the voicemails, Gish threatened to have Cannon...

Merrick Garland is supposed to be a pretty good lawyer. Harvard Law School, federal prosecutor, federal judge, Supreme Court nominee, attorney general presiding over the Department of Justice (DOJ) — all the cake, most of the icing, without the cherry. But some of my former prosecutor friends tell me that he may have overlooked a key procedural point in his current joust with former President Trump over the Mar-a-Lago documents. On Sept. 8, Garland filed a notice of appeal to the 11th circuit Court of Appeals from the special master order of Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon. Simultaneously, he moved...

A decision by a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump to temporarily halt a Justice Department investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate triggered an avalanche of criticism from across the legal spectrum, including attacks from conservatives who served in the Trump administration. “It was deeply flawed in a number of ways,” former Attorney General William Barr said. But Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling is just one of a flurry of controversial decisions by Trump judges in recent months that have been criticized as out of step with longstanding legal principles. Among the provocative decisions from...

Sept. 8 (UPI) -- The Department of Justice said it it intends to appeal a Florida judge's order to appoint a special master to review materials seized by the FBI at former President Donald Trump's Florida home. The DOJ asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida to issue a partial stay of her ruling that prevents them from accessing the classified materials that were seized during the search of Trump's home. "Those aspects of the order will cause the most immediate and serious harms to the government and the public," the DOJ said. "The classified...

Despite assurances to the contrary, Merrick Garland's DOJ is leaking faster than the Titanic after it struck the iceberg. This from Jonatham Turley on Aug. 25 The feds have maintained that absolute secrecy is essential to protect their investigation and national security while reportedly leaking some of the very information the affidavit contains. It is an all-too-familiar pattern for some of us who have litigated national-security cases against the government. The Washington Post and The New York Times have published a series of leaks clearly designed to put Donald Trump and his team on the defense in the media, including...

Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr said Tuesday on FNC’s “The Story” that a federal judge agreeing to a special master in the Trump Mar-a-Lago FBI raid saga was “wrong” and would be overturned if the Department of Justice appeals. Barr said, “The opinion, I think, was wrong, and I think the government should appeal that. It was deeply flawed in a number of ways. I don’t think the appointment of a special master is going to hold up. Even if it does, I don’t see it fundamentally changing the trajectory. In other words, I don’t think it changes the...

MIAMI — In her just over 20 months as a federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon worked mostly in obscurity, becoming nominated and appointed to her position during the height of the coronavirus pandemic and at the end of a turbulent presidency. Then, last month, she was assigned the most prominent case of her short judicial career, involving the very person who put her on the bench: former President Donald J. Trump. On Monday, Judge Cannon granted Mr. Trump’s request to appoint an independent arbiter known as a special master to review materials seized last month from his private Florida club....

A criminal probe "requested by the incumbent president." The seizure of clothing, medical records, tax records and 500 pages of attorney-client privileged documents not covered by a warrant. The sharing of privileged documents with investigators. More than simply appointing a special master to referee an evidence dispute, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon exposed this week a Justice Department search of former President Donald Trump's home that was initiated by his chief Democrat rival, that was carried out so sloppily that it violated the "least intrusive" mandate in the FBI agent's manual, and that failed to keep legally-protected materials from falling...

A ray of light has burst forth from the chambers of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon making a Trump indictment very unlikely. At last, we find a jurist with a real world understanding of the stakes involved and the meaning for the country of a possible criminal proceeding against the former president. Until Judge Cannon’s ruling granting Trump’s lawyers’ request for the appointment of a special master to review the documents seized in the Mar-a-Lago raid, I felt that the case was in the grip of bureaucrats who had no understanding, or even any interest, in bringing any...