District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled on Monday that she is denying efforts to dismiss nearly 10 of the 41 charges in the indictment against Trump and two other co-defendants on several technical issues.
Too-ra-loo-ra, too-ra-loo-rye, aye
However, in a small win for the defense, Judge Cannon ruled she will delete a paragraph within the indictment that was “legally unnecessary.”
Cannon rejected prosecutors’ rationale for including a paragraph in the charges that described an episode alleging Trump showed a classified document in September 2021 about a military operation to someone without a security clearance.
Cannon’s reasoning is that Trump is not charged with disclosing classified materials to anyone after he left office, but it suggests she believes it would be better introduced as evidence at trial — not in the charging document.
The ruling would have little effect on the case.
On Friday, CNN reported that veterans of her federal courtroom see her as inexperienced and isolated in “a pretty sleepy town with a pretty sleepy courtroom.”
While Cannon has dragged out proceedings, ten anonymous lawyers who have practiced in front of Cannon’s courtroom say that her solitary post in the Fort Pierce courthouse deprives her of the informal, day-to-day interactions with more seasoned judges who sit at the other courthouses and could offer her advice.
They also say her lack of trial experience, both as a lawyer and a judge, is apparent.
They see Cannon as extremely diligent and well prepared, a tough questioner who accepts nothing at face value, and thoughtful in her rulings. But irrelevant legal questions distract from core issues, a zero-tolerance approach to any technical defects in filings, and a struggle with docket management that allows the type of pretrial disputes that other judges would decide in weeks go unresolved for months.
“She is not efficient,” said one attorney who practices in south Florida. “She is very form over substance.”
Another attorney described her as “indecisive.”
A third attorney who’s had cases before Cannon said, “She just seems overwhelmed by the process.”