Watchdog makes the case for kicking Judge Aileen Cannon off of Trump classified documents case

When special counsel Jack Smith filed his appellate challenge to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the classified documents case, he didn’t also ask for her removal. But now a third party, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has jumped in to make that request of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

CREW has good evidence for its argument that Cannon should be removed because of her apparent bias, but it may still be a long shot, even though the appeals court will most likely reverse her dismissal of the case.

Filed Tuesday and joined by a former federal judge and judicial ethics experts, CREW’s brief focuses on three areas:

(1) Judge Cannon’s unprecedented assertion of “equitable jurisdiction” to block the Government from using or even viewing documents seized at Mar-a-Lago pursuant to a lawful search warrant; (2) Judge Cannon’s inexplicable call for jury instructions on a spurious legal defense that would have gutted the Government’s case had it ever gone to trial; and (3) Judge Cannon’s failure over the course of one year to move the case forward in any significant way — until a one-Justice concurrence in the Supreme Court’s presidential-immunity opinion expressed approval of the novel constitutional theory that allowed her to end the case.