Remove Aileen Cannon Calls Grow After Classified Docs Case Blown Apart

After Judge Aileen Cannon announced that Donald Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida has been postponed indefinitely, there’s been a dramatic spike in calls for her removal or recusal from the case. 

Several online petitions have been launched from liberal and progressive websites, including one from the Daily Kos calling for her to recuse herself from the case with 102,000 signatures, and another led by Demand Justice, Demand Progress, Dose of Democracy, and People Power United with 42,622 signatures. Yet another petition from MoveOn.org, with nearly 102,000 signatures, calls for Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to remove Cannon from the case.

While online petitions don’t have a strong track record for accomplishing their goals, the calls show a growing backlash to Cannon, a Trump appointee, and her decisions that keep helping Trump. Even prior to being assigned to the documents case, Cannon drew ire from legal observers when she granted Trump’s request for a special master to review the classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago—only for her decision to be struck down by a federal appeals court, which rebuked her.

Later, after being formally assigned to the classified documents case, Cannon repeatedly drew ire for decisions that seemed to drag the case out and put potential witnesses at risk. Her rulings convinced at least one potential witness, former Mar-a-Lago worker Brian Butler, to publicly come forward and criticize Cannon’s handling of the case.

Cannon’s conduct even disillusioned some of her clerks, two of whom decided to quit as a result of her conduct on the classified documents case as well as an allegedly hostile work environment. Despite all this bad press, she still indefinitely delayed the case, possibly paving the way for a positive outcome for Trump. Barring any sort of action compelling her to be removed from the case, it seems as though the prosecution is also indefinitely stuck with Cannon’s delays and seemingly biased decisions.

Donald Trump’s sexual escapades aren’t exactly the conquests that his allies have made them out to be—at least, not according to one woman he slept with.

Stormy Daniels continued her testimony on the stand Thursday, clarifying point blank that it was no high honor to sleep with the former reality TV star.

“Even though you had agreed that you would not discuss this supposed story and you had received a lot of money for that agreement, you then decided that you wanted to publicly say that you had sex with Donald Trump,” prompted Trump attorney Susan Necheles.

“No, nobody would ever want to publicly say that,” Daniels replied.

But that wasn’t her only punch at Trump’s bedroom performance. During another exchange in which Necheles attempted to sow doubt about Daniels’s vivid recollections of the events, the porn star reminded the court of her professional abilities.

“You bragged about being good at writing dialogue and sex scenes in adult films, right?” asked Necheles.

“If that story [with Trump] was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better,” Daniels quipped back.

Daniels wasn’t keen to jump back into bed with Trump, either. On Tuesday, the actress revealed that she slinked out of his advances at a Los Angeles bungalow in 2007 by lying about being on her period.

Daniels’s get-out-of-jail-free card was a lighthearted anecdote in an otherwise heavy description of a relationship that stemmed from what she described as an “imbalance of power.” Daniels has previously said she was mad at herself for not seeing right away that Trump didn’t want to help her career and just wanted to have sex with her, and told the court Tuesday that she hates him.

Meanwhile, Trump’s allies—including Senator Ted Cruz, whom he humiliated in the 2020 election—have vehemently defended his sexual performance, with one Fox News host describing Trump as a “sex god” merely for getting a woman to have sex with him.

Trump is accused of using Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Very early Thursday morning, Donald Trump was posting feverishly on his Truth Social account, with one “Truth” being an article from the National Review titled “Yes, Fight Anti-White Racism.”

The post was one of many that Trump fired off just after midnight Thursday as his hush-money trial was set to resume hours later. His late-night avalanche of posts ranged from articles praising him to attacks on Joe Biden, Paul Ryan, and Rupert Murdoch.

His post on “anti-white racism” is not the first time the former president has brought up the made-up problem. His supporters inside and outside his presidential campaign are making plans to use civil rights laws to counter “anti-white racism,” attacking programs that seek to combat racism and provide economic opportunities to marginalized and minority groups.

In a recent interview with Time magazine, Trump railed against anti-white bias, saying, “But if you look right now, there’s absolutely a bias against white and that’s a problem.” It’s just one of many disturbing, but altogether incoherent, ideas Trump has for a second term if he’s reelected as president. His allies, including Christian nationalists, anti-immigrant xenophobes, and fascist admirers, are practically salivating for the chance to carry out their agendas. 

A bit of alleged unsolicited advice may have compromised the judge in Donald Trump’s $454 million New York bank fraud trial.

New York’s judicial oversight body has opened an investigation into a conversation between Judge Arthur Engoron and real estate attorney Adam Leitman Bailey that allegedly occurred in the weeks leading up to the seismic judgment against Trump.

“I actually had the ability to speak to him three weeks ago,” Bailey told NBC New York on February 16, the day that Engoron’s decision was due. “I saw him in the corner [at the courthouse] and I told my client, ‘I need to go.’ And I walked over and we started talking.… I wanted him to know what I think and why.… I really want him to get it right.”

Bailey also said that Engoron had had a lot of questions about prior fraud cases and that they “went over it.” Ultimately, however, Engoron’s ruling went in a direction that Bailey did not advise: utilizing the statute to effectively shut down Trump’s New York real estate operation, which Bailey believed would hurt the local economy.

A spokesperson for Engoron denied in a statement that the unaffiliated attorney’s comments held any weight with the judge as he made his decision.

“No ex parte conversation concerning this matter occurred between Justice Engoron and Mr. Bailey or any other person. The decision Justice Engoron issued February 16 was his alone, was deeply considered, and was wholly uninfluenced by this individual,” Al Baker, a spokesman for the New York State’s Office of Court Administration, told NBC in a written statement.

The New York state rules of conduct specify that a “a judge shall not initiate, permit, or consider ex parte communications, or consider other communications made to the judge outside the presence of the parties or their lawyers,” though there is wiggle room for a judge to “obtain the advice of a disinterested expert” if the judge gives advance notice to both parties in the case with the possibility of issuing their own responses.

A member of the Trump defense team, Christopher Kise, claimed that the conversation could cast doubt on Engoron’s entire process.

“The code doesn’t provide an exception for ‘Well, this was a small conversation’ or ‘Well, it didn’t really impact me’ or ‘Well, this wasn’t something that I, the judge, found significant,’” Kise told NBC. “No. The code is very clear.”

President Biden briefly held up sending weapons to Israel this week, and Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson promptly freaked out.

The Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader sent a rare joint letter to Biden on Wednesday saying they were “alarmed by media reports that your administration had delayed the delivery of a variety of weapons shipments bound for Israel. This news flies in the face of assurances provided regarding the timely delivery of security assistance to Israel.”

The shipment consisted of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, according to the BBC, and the delay reportedly came because Biden administration officials felt Israel has not “fully addressed” humanitarian concerns in Rafah, a city on Gaza’s border with Egypt where small amounts of aid have entered the territory and where civilians from the rest of Gaza have fled during the war. Israel has recently begun a military operation in the city.

Other Republicans also expressed outrage at the delay.

Senator Lindsey Graham said, “If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the state of Israel at a time of great peril, we will pay a price. This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can’t afford to lose.”

Republicans seem to be ignoring how Israel has already killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 14,500 children. The Biden administration has said previously that Israel’s military would cross a red line if they launched an operation on Rafah, but now maintain that Israel isn’t crossing that line. A cease-fire was agreed to by Hamas this week, only to be rejected by Israel, making Biden’s public statements and behind-the-scenes efforts toward Netanyahu look foolish.

Flippant statements from Israeli officials over the weapons holdup don’t help, either:

(A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in response, “Those comments are deplorable,” adding senior Israeli officials “should refrain from” these kinds of threats.)

At least one Democratic, or rather independent, senator saw the Biden administration’s decision as a good first step, perhaps toward a bigger move.

Bernie Sanders said:

Given the unprecedented humanitarian disaster that Netanyahu’s war has created in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of children face starvation, President Biden is absolutely right to halt bomb delivery to this extreme, right-wing Israeli government. But this must be a first step.

The U.S. must now use ALL its leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire, the end of the attacks on Rafah, and the immediate delivery of massive amounts of humanitarian aid to people living in desperation. Our leverage is clear. Over the years, the United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel. We can no longer be complicit in Netanyahu’s horrific war against the Palestinian people.