The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified-documents trial has faced renewed calls to recuse herself from the case after she reprimanded Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team for a word count on their legal filings.
Judge Aileen Cannon was appointed to the bench in 2018 by the former president. She has been criticized by legal experts for her response to federal prosecutors urging her not to be “manipulated” by Trump into delaying the federal trial, which is set to begin in May 2024. The frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges in connection to the classified documents case and has repeatedly called the trial a political witch hunt.
Legal experts have told Newsweek that they doubt Cannon will be removed or recuse herself from the trial this far into the proceedings.
judges get to criticize people, sure. But “your briefs are too long” are not one of them. Unless they legitimately are word salad with no substance.
Cannon doesn’t get to “TL/DR” and Smith’s team is very unlikely to do the word salad thing. That’s more of Trump’s specialty.
Actually, she does. Regardless of her motives, I seriously doubt that asking the prosecution to keep their briefs…brief…would be considered grounds for recusal. Same with setting her own schedule for the trial, even if that schedule is ridiculously delayed and clearly favors Trump.
And I’m not saying this in her defense. She should be removed. The problem is that she’s going the “death by a thousand paper cuts” route, and doing nothing that would be considered technically appealable. She may be flouting the rules, but she’s staying within them, even if only by millimeters.