Judge Aileen Cannon, the controversial Donald Trump-appointed U.S. district judge now overseeing the former president's Espionage Act trial in South Florida, has so far shown no signs of recusing herself from the case instead ordering Trump's defense attorneys to move through the security clearance process to allow for the trial to take place.
One of the big problems, though, argued former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on Twitter Thursday, is that she simply lacks enough experience overseeing criminal trials to be thrown right into a major, nationally-watched case like this.
"With almost no judicial trial experience, Judge Cannon presiding over the Trump trial is like a newly-minted doctor who has done nothing but treated a few scraped knees being hustled into the OR to perform complex brain surgery," wrote Kirschner, adding, "It ain’t gonna end well."
Cannon drew public outrage several months ago when she ordered intelligence officials to stop reviewing the classified documents seized from Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, appointing a special master to review the documents first — even as legal experts and national security experts warned this would interfere with the counterintelligence process and create a separate legal standard for former presidents.
Ultimately, she was overruled by a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit, including two other Trump appointees, who rejected her order as inconsistent with the law.
While many legal experts have sounded the alarm about Cannon's impartiality, some others, like former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman, have asserted that it is premature to demand she step aside and that her experience as a prosecutor qualifies her to understand the case.
