It looks like Aileen Cannon is sticking around. At least if she has her way.
The Donald Trump-appointed judge made her first appearance on the docket Tuesday in the federal prosecution against the former president. She weighed in on a relatively uncontroversial matter, denying as moot a press motion to unseal the indictment, because it’s already unsealed. The significance of Cannon’s entry was that it signaled business as usual as opposed to her recusal.
To be sure, it’s unsurprising that she isn’t recusing, or hasn’t yet, despite her whacked-out rulings for Trump in the special master litigation that preceded his indictment. It was there that Cannon basically tried to hold up the Justice Department’s investigation that led to Trump’s indictment last week under the Espionage Act and other federal statutes.
Trump is set to be arraigned Tuesday, though Cannon isn’t slated to preside over the arraignment. Instead, a magistrate judge will oversee Tuesday’s hearing before the case goes to Cannon, who could handle (or mishandle) any trial that comes.
It’s unsurprising not only because a judge who ruled the way she did for Trump might not be inclined to excuse herself from the matter. But also because, as I wrote Monday, precedent doesn’t clearly require her to do so. Even though the conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals roundly rejected Cannon’s prior rulings for Trump, those rulings came in what was technically separate litigation. So, to get kicked off the criminal case, to which she was apparently randomly assigned, she may first need to do something similarly wacky on Trump’s behalf anew. Whether and how the DOJ tries to take Cannon off the case remains to be seen, but for now, it appears that she isn’t doing so herself. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Blog newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump investigations and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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