• Nature - Earth - Countries - United States - Government - Law - United States federal judges - Aileen Cannon
• ont-uid: ahng2ud6
• curation date: 2022-10-06
• Aileen Mercedes Cannon (born 1981) is a Colombian-born American lawyer and jurist who serves as a U.S. district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
She was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2020.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION.
Aileen Mercedes Cannon was born in 1981 in Cali, Colombia.
Her mother had fled Cuba under Fidel Castro.
She attended Ransom Everglades School, a private high school in Miami, Florida.
After graduating from Duke University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts, Aileen Cannon worked as a paralegal for the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division from 2003 to 2005.
She then attended the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an articles editor for the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform.
She graduated in 2007 with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude and Order of the Coif membership.
LEGAL CAREER.
After law school, Aileen Cannon was a summer associate at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (now Gibson Dunn) in its Washington, D.C. office.
From 2008 to 2009, she was a law clerk to judge Steven Colloton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
She then returned to Gibson Dunn from 2009 to 2012.
From 2013 until her judicial appointment in 2020, Aileen Cannon was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
Cannon worked in the district's major crimes section from 2013 to 2015, then in its appellate section from 2015 to 2020.
Aileen Cannon has been a member of the Federalist Society since 2005.
FEDERAL JUDICIAL SERVICE.
On 2020-04-29 Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Aileen Cannon to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
She was nominated to the seat vacated by judge Kenneth Marra, who assumed senior status on 2017-08-01.
On 2020-05-21, her nomination was sent to the United States Senate.
The American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary rated Aileen Cannon as "Qualified," with a substantial majority of the committee supporting that rating and a minority rating her "Well Qualified." The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on her nomination on July 29, 2020.
On September 17, 2020, her nomination was reported out of committee by a 16-6 vote.
The Senate voted 56-21 to confirm her nomination on November 12, 2020.
She received her judicial commission on November 13, 2020.
NOTABLE CASES.
In the case of Paul Vernon Hoeffer, a 60-year-old man who pleaded guilty to making death threats against three Democrats: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and prosecutor Kim Foxx, with federal sentencing guidelines recommending 33 and 41 months in prison, and prosecutors proposing 41 months, Aileen Cannon in April 2022 sentenced Hoeffer to 18 months in prison and then three years of supervised release, and also fined him $2,000.
Aileen Cannon then heard the case of Trump v. United States, which began on 2022-08-22, when former U.S. president Trump asked the court to appoint a special master to review the materials seized from Mar-a-Lago earlier that month (2022-08).
On 2022-08-27 Aileen Cannon provided notice of her "preliminary intent" to appoint a special master in the case; this notice was given before she had heard any arguments by the Justice Department.
Two days later the Justice Department told Aileen Cannon it had completed its review of materials that may fall under attorney-client privilege.
On 2022-09-05 Aileen Cannon granted Trump's request for a special master to review the seized materials.
In the same decision, she ordered the Justice Department to stop using the seized material in its investigation until the special master's review is complete or until a further court order.
In her ruling, Aileen Cannon stated that she took "into account the undeniably unprecedented nature of the search of a former President's residence", and that since Trump was a former president, "the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own", and any "future indictment, based to any degree on property that ought to be returned, would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude." Many legal experts criticized the soundness of Aileen Cannon's order and its potential consequences.
Those who objected included law professors Ryan Goodman, Peter M. Shane, Orin Kerr, David Alan Sklansky, Samuel W. Buell, Ronald S. Sullivan Jr.; former White House ethics chief Norm Eisen, former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, and Trump's former Attorney General William Barr.
Legal journalist Benjamin Wittes raised that during a trial after an indictment, improperly seized evidence can be challenged for exclusion from the trial, while law professor Laurence Tribe stated that Aileen Cannon failed to properly examine what harm would Trump suffer from waiting until trial to make the challenge.
After the Justice Department appealed to Aileen Cannon to allow their investigation into seized classified-marked documents to continue, and to exempt such documents from the special master's review, Aileen Cannon rejected this on 2022-09-15.
In her order, Aileen Cannon stated that she "does not find it appropriate to accept" the government's claims that the documents are classified "without further review by a neutral third party." In her decision, Aileen Cannon cited "ongoing factual and legal disputes".
Trump's lawyers had not disputed that the documents were declassified in any court proceeding.
Further, Judge Aileen Cannon rejected the Justice Department's argument that Trump's possession of the material risked "imminent disclosure of classified information." She cited "leaks to the media after the underlying seizure" of the documents, without specifying what sources might have been responsible for the leaks.
On 2022-09-21 the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals stayed portions of Aileen Cannon's ruling, allowing around 100 classified documents to be used in the Justice Department's investigation, and rescinding the requirement for the special master to review the classified documents.
The appeals court stated that under Aileen Cannon, "the district court abused its discretion in exercising equitable jurisdiction" over the case, chiefly because of Aileen Cannon's own conclusion that Trump "did not show that the United States acted in callous disregard of his constitutional rights"; a critical factor in determining jurisdiction.
Furthermore, while Aileen Cannon ruled that Trump had an interest in some of the seized documents, the appeals court found that this did not apply to the classified documents, and that under Aileen Cannon "the district court made no mention" of why or how Trump "might have an individual interest in or need for the classified documents", which was another factor in determining jurisdiction.
Echoing other criticisms of Aileen Cannon's ruling, the panel stated that there is "no evidence that any of these records were declassified", and that in any case, "the declassification argument is a red herring" that does not establish Trump's "personal interest" in the documents even if they were declassified.
On 2022-09-29 Aileen Cannon overruled procedures proposed by the special master she appointed, senior federal judge Raymond Dearie, who had been nominated by Trump's legal team.
In her order, Aileen Cannon agreed with Trump's legal team on multiple issues: (1) removing Dearie's need for Trump's lawyers to identify inaccuracies in the list of items the FBI took from Mar-a-Lago, at least "prior to the review of any of the seized materials"; (2) removing Dearie's need for Trump's lawyers to explicitly classify separately documents that executive privilege rendered unable to review by (a) those within the executive branch, and (b) those outside the executive branch; and (3) delaying the deadline for the completion of the special master's review to mid-December 2022.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileen_Cannon
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Federalist_Society_members
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_district_court_judges_appointed_by_Donald_Trump
• See also:
(2022-10-06, https://www.salon.com/2022/10/06/the-more-we-learn-the-worse-things-look-error-exposes-judges-obvious-sympathy/) "'The more we learn, the worse things look:' Court error exposes judge's 'obvious' Trump sympathy.
Judge Aileen Cannon's descriptions of potentially privileged documents are in stark contrast with the actual documents."
• (2022-11-23, https://www.salon.com/2022/11/23/goodbye-cannon-experts-say-judges-controversial-pro-order-doomed-after-hostile-hearing/) "'Goodbye Cannon:' Experts say judge's controversial pro-Trump order doomed after 'hostile' hearing.
'A shame it has taken so many months just to overrule Judge Cannon's nonsense,' ex-solicitor general says."