The last time U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled on a case involving Donald Trump and his alleged hoarding of classified documents, the dressing-down from appellate judges above her was stern and blunt.
Last year, Cannon, a Trump appointee, approved Trump’s demand for an outside arbiter to examine documents that federal agents had seized from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump’s bid clearly was a stall tactic aimed at slowing the Justice Department’s investigation, and Cannon facilitated it. The Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and won.
In reversing Cannon’s ruling, a three-judge appellate panel criticized the special treatment Cannon was giving the former president, stating, “To create a special exception here would defy our Nation’s foundational principle that our law applies to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank.”
