The judge initially assigned to oversee the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump will likely be subject to a recusal request from the Department of Justice, an expert said Friday.
Judge Aileen Cannon was initially assigned, ABC reported. She's a Trump appointee who was previously humiliated by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for her earlier actions around the case when she tried to block the FBI from reviewing documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Daniel Uhlfelder, who ran an unsuccessful race for Florida attorney general in 2022, said he expects the recusal request was inevitable given her previous involvement.
Cannon appointed a special master last year to review materials seized from Trump's Mar-a-Lago last year, then tried to block the FBI from reviewing documents saying, "A future indictment, based to any degree on property that ought to be returned, would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude."
She was overturned by Florida's Court of Appeals.
“The law is clear,” Judge William Pryor wrote for the unanimous panel from the Eleventh Circuit. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
Uhlfelder asked if the Justice Department prosecutors would move to have Cannon recused.
"If it does and is successful, case will likely be transferred to Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, who is also in [West Palm Beach]. Trump unsuccessfully tried to recuse him before," he tweeted Friday.
