Aileen Cannon Displays 'Visceral Dislike' of Jack Smith: Ex-Federal Judge

Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to deliver remarks on August 1, 2023 in Washington, DC. Retired Judge Shira Scheindlin said that Judge Aileen Cannon has shown a "visceral dislike" for Smith and his team.

Judge Aileen Cannon displays a "visceral dislike" of Special Counsel Jack Smith, retired federal Judge Shira Scheindlin said.

Discussing Cannon's handling of former President Donald Trump's classified documents case, Scheindlin said she's been struck by Cannon's "dislike of the government and her favoritism toward the defense."

"I'm not saying that that's going to, in the end, determine how she rules on everything, but she seems to have a visceral dislike of Jack Smith and his team," Scheindlin, an appointee of President Bill Clinton who served as a federal judge for more than two decades, told NPR. "She's constantly criticizing them. She's constantly being sharp and sarcastic with them, and she almost never treats the defense that way."

Scheindlin's criticisms echo similar concerns raised by others in the legal community about Cannon and her decisions surrounding Trump's federal case in Florida.

Cannon, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Trump in 2020, has faced staunch criticisms since she granted the former president's request for a special master to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI and ordered the Justice Department to stop using those materials in its investigation in September 2022. Less than three weeks later, an appeals court granted the DOJ's request to block certain parts of the order, finding that Cannon had "abused its discretion in exercising equitable jurisdiction."

Since then, Cannon has issued a series of orders that have delayed the case and taken months to make routine procedural decisions. Last month, she delayed the start of the trial indefinitely, saying that there are too many outstanding pre-trial motions and issues that need to be resolved before the case can go to trial. She had initially set a trial start date of May 20.

While Scheindlin remarked about Cannon's "favoritism" to Trump, she said Monday that the main thing about Cannon that has stood out to her is "how she has constantly caused delay in the case instead of moving it forward."

Scheindlin said Cannon has been unable to rule in an efficient manner, holding onto motions and keeping them pending, so that there's no final decision on the matter.

"Most experienced judges, which of course I considered myself after 27 years, try to know which motions really require further consideration and argument and which, you know, instinctively you could say frankly, one word: denied. And you can rule from the bench," the retired judge said.

In a video earlier this month, Ben Meiselas, a lawyer and co-founder of the liberal MeidasTouch media outlet, made a similar argument, slamming Cannon for her use of paperless orders, which he said were a strategy "to try to screw around with the scheduling and make things complicated and delay things in order to try to help Donald Trump."

"Without making any substantive ruling... she won't get reversed by the 11th circuit like she was back in 2022 when she unlawfully asserted equitable jurisdiction over the search warrant executed at Mar a Lago," Meiselas said, adding that, "If Jack Smith went to the 11th Circuit, and said, 'Look what's going on with the scheduling,' the 11th Circuit would say, 'We really don't have jurisdiction to even address this.'"

Start your unlimited Newsweek trial