New questions raised over how Trump's Mar-a-Lago case ended up in the hands of Judge Aileen Cannon
Donald Trump, Aileen Cannon (Photo by AFP/ Cannon photo via U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida)
October 18, 2022
According to a report from the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, more and more legal experts and observers are questioning the sequence of unusual events that led to Donald Trump's legal battle with the Department of Justice over the search and seizure of government documents he took with him to his Mar-a-Lago resort ended up under the watchful eye of one his hand-picked federal judges.
Since the day U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida was handed the case filed by the former president's lawyers, she has issued a series of pro-Trump rulings that have baffled -- and enraged -- legal scholars.
The DOJ, for its part, has been busy running to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which has consistently either overruled her or issued stays favorable to the government as investigators ponder Espionage Act or obstruction charges.
According to Pagleiry, recent information on how the suit was filed, far from Palm Beach where Trump lives, has led to more scrutiny of how Trump's people gamed the system.
RELATED: Judge Cannon 'has humiliated herself' as the Supreme Court refuses to step in
"When Donald Trump’s legal team filed their court paperwork protesting the Mar-a-Lago raid, a lawyer took the rare step of actually filing the paperwork in person. At a courthouse 44 miles from Mar-a-Lago. And they got a judge to oversee the case that was outside both West Palm Beach—where the raid took place—and the district where they filed," the Daily Beast reporter wrote. "Those incredible coincidences have led lawyers and legal experts to suggest that something may not be above board with how Trump’s team filed their lawsuit."
As he notes, the lawsuit was filed in person instead of using the electronic means put in place for just that purpose. Pagliery reports that the Trump legal team claims that they made the in-person filing because the system was suffering from "technical issues." However, the Beast report states that there is no evidence the system was down according to other lawyers who were using it at that time.
The report adds, "For another, lawyers typically file lawsuits at the district where an issue took place. Trump’s lawyers filed at a courthouse in a neighboring division. And third, lawyers will mark a case as 'related' when it deals with a similar matter. Trump’s legal team did not—despite the fact that another magistrate judge at the right courthouse had approved the FBI’s search warrant to recover those classified government documents from Mar-a-Lago."
Law professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond admitted something seems off-kilter about the whole sequence of events, stating, "It’s clearly related. I don’t think there’s a plausible argument that it’s not related… it was related to another case in the district—in the same courthouse as a matter of fact."
ALSO IN THE NEWS: The door to remove Judge Aileen Cannon from the Trump case is now 'wide open': former prosecutor
Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson stated the case ending up in Cannon's hand was a big win for Trump and his lawyers.
“It was basically a home run to get her," she explained. "They clearly made the correct calculation, because Judge Cannon’s rulings legally don’t make sense. They only make sense if you’re trying to help the former president.”
Admitting there is no doubt that Trump's lawyers were "judge shopping," she continued, "They did not want the magistrate judge to make this decision. There was already a captain of this ship. They just didn’t like the direction this was taking.”
Lawyers in the area, who didn't want to give their names, also found the method of filing the lawsuit curious.
According to one, "I don’t know anybody who files in person. I didn’t even know you could do that anymore. It looks like this person was trying to select a particular judge,” while another suggested, "People don’t do this anymore. It’s extremely odd. I guess you could do this if you wanted to get a particular judge—or avoid getting a particular judge."
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