Reprinted from progressive.org
Amid all the excitement generated by the indictments against Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., and in Fulton County, Georgia, for election subversion, it's easy to lose sight of the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which is set for trial next May. But of all Trump's legal woes, that case is the only one that looks like a slam dunk.
Classified intelligence material found during search of Mar-a-Lago.
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Classified intelligence material found during search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.
Trump stands accused of committing forty felonies for absconding from the White House with a trove of classified and top-secret papers, stashing them at his Palm Beach golf resort, and refusing to return them to the federal government on demand. Two other defendants Walt Nauta, Trump's longtime valet; and Carlos de Oliveira, the resort's property manager are accused of committing some crimes jointly with Trump and others on their own.
Unfortunately, there is one big problem facing Special Counsel Jack Smith's team in the Sunshine State: The trial will be presided over by District Court Judge Aileen Mercedes Cannon, who may just be in the metaphorical tank for the former President.
Cannon, who was born in Colombia and grew up in Miami, was nominated by Trump in May 2020 to serve on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She was thirty-nine-years-old, relatively young by federal judicial standards.
Cannon was confirmed by the Senate on November 12, 2020, nine days after Trump lost the presidential election, despite having only four minor jury trials on her resume as a practicing attorney. Her scant record as a published author at the time of her nomination included a series of human-interest pieces she wrote as an undergraduate for El Nuevo Herald, a Miami-based Spanish-language daily newspaper. Among the topics she covered were prenatal yoga, the health benefits of tomatoes, and Flamenco dance.
By all appearances, Cannon grew more serious in law school at the University of Michigan, joining the Federalist Society and establishing herself as a staunch conservative. She served as an assistant U.S. attorney in southern Florida from 2013 to 2020, and in that capacity, caught the eye of the Trump Administration as a worthy candidate to add to the growing cadre of right-wing judges the ex-President had appointed.
Once enrobed, Cannon was assigned to a courtroom in Fort Pierce, north of West Palm Beach. Under normal circumstances, she would have remained under the radar for years, handling a challenging but standard docket of civil and criminal litigation. The FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, changed that trajectory in a flash.
Cannon was assigned to hear a highly unusual civil lawsuit Trump's lawyers filed on August 22, seeking an emergency protective order to block the government from indicting Trump until the propriety of the search could be reviewed by an independent arbiter known as a "special master." Suddenly, she found herself in the national spotlight.
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