By james art 
Left: Judge Eileen Cannon (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida); Right: Special Prosecutor Jack Smith (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
If Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, will he reward Judge Eileen Cannon for dismissing the prosecution of his classified documents at Mar-a-Lago by promoting her to US Attorney General and replacing Chief Special Counsel Jack Smith , Merrick Garland? Recent reports say Cannon is on the shortlist for AG, and defense attorneys for Trump assassination suspect Ryan Root have taken notice.
ABC News reported Tuesday that a Trump campaign document, “Transition Planning: Legal Principles,” lists Cannon second only to former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton on a list of potential AGs.
Ruth’s federal public defender team — Hector Dopico, Christy Militello and Rene Sihwola — took note and filed a brief early Wednesday in support of an existing motion asking Cannon to withdraw from the case.
The defense has already argued that Trump has “encouraged the perception that the Court is biased in his favor” by “repeatedly” praising Cannon as the “brilliant woman” who “dealt with deception” in a classified documents case and dismissed it under the Appointments Clause in July, finding after “careful” investigation that Jack Smith had been illegally appointed by Garland.
Smith is currently appealing the dismissal, but has not sought Cannon’s disqualification, unlike other attorneys involved in the 11th Circuit case.
Whether Smith will make the move from here now that it appears Cannon may in the future be able to piece together his case again is unknown. What is known, however, is that Ruth does not want a vaunted Trump appointee to oversee a case that could put the 58-year-old defendant in prison for the rest of his life for allegedly trying to kill Trump. while he golf in September.
Just last week, Routh filed papers seeking Cannon’s recusal. He argued that Cannon’s ability to be impartial in the attempted-assassination case could reasonably be questioned because Trump has repeatedly praised her publicly for dropping his own criminal case, and as a result, she could be a candidate for a higher post, perhaps on the US Supreme Court.
Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida responded Monday in support of Cannon, writing that Root lacked a “sufficient legal or factual basis” for the motion to recuse and did not “cite any authority requiring recusal under these circumstances[.]”
On Wednesday, the defense told Cannon that “the facts here are unprecedented” and support her recusal, but later in Ruth’s response there was a link to an ABC News story about Cannon’s potential run for AG [bolding ours]:
This is not the usual situation in which a judge evaluates an official policy enacted by the president who nominated it. Rather, Mr. Trump is the alleged victim of an assassination attempt; thus he has a personal bet on the outcome. And in the public mind, the fact that Mr. Trump appointed Your Honor may add to the appearance of bias, given that he has publicly praised Your Honor for rulings in his previous case; and if Mr. Trump becomes president again, he will have the power to raise your honor to a federal appeals court (including the US Supreme Court) or in high-ranking positions in the executive branch. See e.gCatherine Folders et al., Judge who dropped Trump’s classified documents case on list of proposed attorney general nomineesABC News (October 22, 2024); Jess Brewin and C. Ryan Barber, Trump loyalists are pushing for a embattled slate of new justicesWall St. Journal (14 October 2024).
The defense also argued that prosecutors only recently disclosed, though not in the public record, that Cannon was a high school classmate of a member of the prosecution team and that years later she was a guest at his wedding:
Finally, there is a new, additional point that Mr. Raut has to raise. After Mr. Raut entered his plea, the government notified defense counsel for the first time that a member of the prosecution team—Christopher Brown of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division in Miami—had attended high school with Your Honor, and Your Honor visited mr. Brown’s wedding nine years ago. It is not clear why the government felt that this information was important enough to share with defense counsel but not important enough to include in its response. And it’s not clear why, despite hundreds of capable prosecutors in this district and across the country, the government chose to team this high-profile case with a prosecutor who enjoys a longstanding personal relationship with the presiding judge. In the public mind, this fact can further enhance the appearance of bias.
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