It’s “extremely unlikely” that Judge Aileen Cannon will actually end up presiding over the Donald Trump trial
A panic erupted on Friday when it was reported that Judge Aileen Cannon – the same judge who previously tried to make a mess of the DOJ’s classified documents probe – was preliminarily assigned to handle Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday. The doomsday types immediately began assigning magical powers to Cannon and fretting about how Trump was somehow off the hook.
But the actual legal experts, who know this stuff, have a very different take. Joyce Vance tweeted that even if Cannon makes it as far as the arraignment, the system is built to deal with these things, and the 11th Circuit Court “won’t tolerate the damage it would do to their credibility if she failed to voluntarily recuse .. It is not clear Cannon is permanently assigned to the case. If she is, it’s extremely unlikely it stays with her and as a last resort, DOJ will challenge her participation and win.”
So can everyone stop fretting about this now? Sure, there are plenty of talking heads who are insisting that this is some doomsday situation. But those people aren’t the legal experts. They’re people whose job is to scare and outrage everyone into staying tuned in. And they’re the people who told us the DOJ would never indict Trump to begin with. So why listen to them about this now?
