Who is Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge overseeing secret documents case?

On Tuesday, Donald Trump will be making his appearance in the historic secret documents case. In what is a twist straight out of a movie, the judge that will oversee the case is none other than Trump appointee Aileen Cannon. But who is judge Cannon? Let’s take a closer look: Who is she? Cannon, 42, is a former federal prosecutor. As per NBCMiami, Cannon was nominated to the federal bench by Trump in 2019 and only confirmed by the Senate after he lost his reelection bid in 2020. Cannon sits in Fort Pierce, about an hour’s drive north of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. As per The Guardian, Cannon was born in 1981 in Colombia’s Cali. Cannon’s mother was Cuban and her father was an American from Indiana, according to NBCMiami.com.

Cannon, who came to the US as a child, was raised in Miami where she went to a private school.

She graduated from Duke University in 2003. During her college years, Cannon wrote a series of articles for El Nuevo Herald, a Spanish-language newspaper in southern Florida owned by The Miami Herald. According to a list of articles provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cannon wrote primarily about health- and culture-related topics. In 2007, she earned a degree from the University of Michigan Law School. Afterwards, she clerked for Iowa appellate judge US District Judge Steven M Colloton on the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. She then worked  in private practice in Washington for three years with the prominent international law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. Cannon was appointed to the federal bench a dozen years after being admitted to practice law – the minimum experience mandated for nominees by the American Bar Association. As per NBC South Florida, Cannon served as a federal prosecutor in South Florida’s Fort Pierce from 2013 to 2020. Cannon prosecuted 41 cases as part of the Major Crimes Division, later handling appeals of criminal convictions and sentences. During her college years, Cannon wrote a series of articles for El Nuevo Herald, a Spanish-language newspaper in southern Florida owned by The Miami Herald. According to a list of articles provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cannon wrote primarily about health- and culture-related topics. She has also been a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that has championed judges appointed by Trump, including Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The New York Times in 2022 quoted a defence lawyer in West Palm Beach as describing Cannon as “thorough, meticulous and often willing to rule against the government”. “The general feeling that I’ve gotten from her is, ‘I don’t buy everything the government has to tell me,’” Valentin Rodriguez Jr told the newspaper. “You can’t expect that if you and the government have some sort of agreement, over sentencing or a plea, that that’s necessarily going to convince her. In that sense, you could call her something of a freethinker.” Why is she being criticised? According to NBCMiami, Aileen was ‘randomly selected’ to oversee Trump’s trial. But that hasn’t stopped an outpouring of criticism against her. Not just because she ruled in Trump’s favour last year in a dispute over whether an outside special master could be appointed to review the seized classified documents – but because of the way in which she did it.

Trump’s supporters had cheered her ruling as a check on what they viewed as a politically motivated probe.

His lawyers had argued that a special master was necessary to ensure an independent review of records taken during the search and so that any personal information or documents could be filtered out and returned to Trump. [caption id=“attachment_12718622” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Donald Trump has been accused of risking national security by storing sensitive documents at his Florida residence. Reuters File Photo[/caption] But many legal experts saw as her decision in favour of Trump – temporarily barring federal agents and prosecutors from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during the search – as extraordinary and unusually broad. According to Vox, a three-judge panel – two of whom themselves were hand-picked by Trump – overturned her decision while acknowledging around a dozen errors in her opinion. Another panel found that she never had the authority to inhibit the investigation. That panel found her decisions favouring Trump were a “a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations”. The panel cautioned that her approach “would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.” But others disagree. One of her cases as a prosecutor involved a defendant in a major $800 million Ponzi scheme who unsuccessfully appealed his numerous fraud convictions to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Her opposing counsel in that case, longtime Miami defense attorney Richard Klugh, described Cannon as “very bright and talented” and fair to the defence. “I didn’t see anything I could characterize as anything other than good lawyering, and no political bias whatsoever,” Klugh said, adding that he has worked on cases handled by Judge Cannon, although he has not appeared in her courtroom. “She’s known for affording fair process and hearings. You like somebody who actually hears you out,” he said. She was asked during her 2020 Senate confirmation process whether she had any discussions with anyone, including people at the White House or the Justice Department, about loyalty to President Trump. In a written response, she replied: “No.” During her July 2020 confirmation hearing, the then-prosecutor noted that her mother “had to flee the repressive Castro regime in search of freedom and security,” leaving Cuba at the age of 7. “Thank you for teaching me about the blessing that is this country and the importance of securing the rule of law for generations to come,” Cannon said, addressing her mother. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.