Florida Judge Aileen Cannon has been criticized after postponing Donald Trump’s classified documents trial indefinitely.
Florida Judge Aileen Cannon has come under fire from a number of legal experts after delaying the start of Donald Trump’s classified documents trial, with one lawyer labeling her «intellectually out of her league» on social media.
On Tuesday Cannon indefinitely postponed the trial, which had been due to start on May 20, citing legal disputes around classified evidence. Cannon said there were eight outstanding substantive pending motions for her to rule on and predicted this will take until at least late July. She didn’t set a new court trial date meaning it is unclear whether the case will get underway before the November 2024 presidential election.
Trump is facing 40 federal charges over claims he improperly held onto classified documents after leaving the White House in January 2021 and then obstructed attempts to get them returned to the relevant authorities. He has pled not guilty and claimed the charges against him, along with those in three separate criminal trials, are politically motivated.
On X, formerly Twitter, a number of legal experts hit out at Cannon’s decision.
Asha Rangappa, a lawyer and former FBI agent with over 831,000 X followers, wrote: «I think that Judge Cannon is intellectually out of her league and is having some weird analysis paralysis because her personal partisanship makes her place Trump’s bizarre arguments (like that nuclear secrets are his personal records) on par with [special counsel Jack] Smith’s *actual* legal arguments.
