Judge Aileen Cannon should be removed from former President’s Donald Trump’s government documents case should the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reverse her ruling to dismiss it, according to an amicus brief filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a federal watchdog group that alleges she was biased in favor of Trump throughout the process.
“At every possible opportunity, Judge Cannon has demonstrated her apparent bias in favor of Donald Trump,” said CREW President Noah Bookbinder in a statement. “She has at every stage made this case more difficult than the law mandated, and she then dismissed it on largely unprecedented grounds, delivering a significant win to Trump. Should the Court reverse her decision, it must also ensure that the case is reassigned to allow it to proceed fairly and expeditiously and to help restore the credibility of the federal court system.”
The document CREW filed with the 11th Circuit pointed out that if the higher court reverses Cannon’s decision, it would be the third time in less than three years that they’ve had to do so in a “seemingly straightforward case about a former president’s unauthorized possession of government documents.”
“A reasonable member of the public could conclude, as many have, that the dismissal was the culmination of Judge Cannon’s many efforts to undermine and derail the prosecution of this case,” CREW argued in its amicus brief.
While CREW has filed plenty of amicus briefs to highlight what it sees as ethical lapses by legal, political and moneyed actors, the group has rarely gone so far as to call for a judge’s outright removal from a case. The request for the 11th Circuit to remove Cannon is part of a cascade of criticism aimed at holding her accountable for what many legal experts say are unprecedented, legally dubious decisions that they say reflect either her incompetence, her bias in favor of the president who appointed her, or both.
Those decisions, which included allowing outside attorneys to argue in her court against the appointment of a special counsel, ultimately resulted in the case’s dismissal on the grounds that Attorney General Merrick Garland unlawfully chose Jack Smith to lead the case.
Smith filed an 81-page document with the 11th Circuit at the end of August seeking to reverse Cannon’s decision, highlighting that no court since 1974 has denied the right of an attorney general to appoint an outside prosecutor, a right upheld by four separate statutes and the Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Nixon.
Some legal experts worry now that the Supreme Court could uphold Cannon’s decision. “And with this Supreme Court, there’s no ceiling,” former U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner and CREW friend of the court told ProPublica. “All precedents are up for grabs.”