Conservative legal scholar calls for impeachment of Trump Judge Aileen Cannon

A leading member of a conservative think tank is now calling for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — the Trump-appointed overseer of the former president's classified documents trial — to be impeached.

In a response to the news Thursday evening that Judge Cannon was refusing to set a key pre-trial deadline until next year, Norman Ornstein — an Emeritus scholar at the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute — called for an impeachment resolution to be introduced against Cannon.

"She is a full-fledged member of the Trump defense team. Aileen Cannon is utterly unfit for the bench," Ornstein tweeted. "[The resolution] will go nowhere but will highlight her outrageous conduct."

Special counsel Jack Smith previously asked Judge Cannon to set a Section 5 deadline under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), which would make a defendant specify which classified information they intend to use at trial. Cannon, for her part, refused to do so and said a CIPA deadline wouldn't be set until March 1, 2024. Because the trial is set for May of 2024, setting a CIPA deadline so late would almost certainly cause a significant delay in trial proceedings. The Guardian's Hugo Lowell estimated Cannon's actions would push the trial back by roughly four months.

After news broke of Cannon's refusal to set a CIPA deadline, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann tweeted "Judge Cannon's bias is showing over and over again."

"[Jack] Smith has to be weighing whether, when, and how to seek her reversal by the [United States Court] of Appeals and her removal," Weissmann added.

Ornstein's suggestion that Cannon should be impeached would almost certainly fall flat in Congress, which ultimately decides on impeachment for federal elected officials and judges.

In order to be removed from the bench, Cannon would need to be both impeached by the House of Representatives — which is under Republican control — and convicted in the US Senate by a two-thirds vote. According to the website for the federal judiciary, impeachment and conviction is extremely rare.

To date, only 15 judges have ever been impeached, and only eight of those judges were convicted and removed from the bench