An attorney who served in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of General Counsel took to the pages of the New York Times to accuse U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon of aiding and abetting Donald Trump's theft of government documents by not letting the DOJ's case get a fair hearing.
According to Briand Greer who claims he has "expertise in Espionage Act prosecutions similar to the one pending against Mr. Trump, who is accused of illegally taking classified state documents from the White House after he left office," Cannon's conduct since the case was assigned to her is "inexcusable" and a sign she is not fit to oversee the trial of the man who handed her her lifetime appointment to the bench.
Leaving no doubt about how he feels about her conduct, he wrote, "... the prosecution against him [Trump] is actually not particularly complex," and then added, "Judge Cannon has made almost no progress over the past 11 months. That is shocking and indefensible."
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"The judge has made almost no progress, and her inexperience is showing," he continued before suggesting, "Judge Cannon has not yet addressed a single substantive issue that will determine what the trial looks like. The most difficult issues she needs to address lie ahead, including those involving presidential immunity, attorney-client privilege and, most important, how this highly classified information will be used and protected at trial. She won’t even start resolving these issues until August at the earliest — over 14 months after Mr. Trump was indicted."
Pointing out that it is "impossible to conclude that Judge Cannon is diligently moving the case forward as she has claimed," Greer suggested Judge Cannon is assisting the former president in untoward ways and that she is one more "frivolous' ruling away from special counsel having a case to demand her removal.
"The rule of law depends in part on fair, impartial judges. When judges put their finger on the scale, as Judge Cannon appears to have done, it undermines public confidence in our justice system. Moreover, failing to hold Mr. Trump accountable will have the compound effect of undermining our credibility on national security matters — by sending the message that a former president can knowingly compromise the trusted secrets of our foreign allies with impunity," the ex-CIA counsel wrote before declaring, "The world is watching, and Judge Cannon is proving that she is not fit for this moment."
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