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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon declined to recuse herself from the case of Ryan Routh, who is charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last month. The judge appointed to the federal bench by the alleged victim in Routh’s case brushed aside the defendant’s concerns about Trump’s praise of Cannon and the possibility that he could promote her to even higher office if he’s elected next week.
“I have no control over what private citizens, members of the media, or public officials or candidates elect to say about me or my judicial rulings,” Cannon wrote in an order published Tuesday. “I have never spoken to or met former President Trump except in connection with his required presence at an official judicial proceeding, through counsel,” added the judge who dismissed Trump’s classified documents case in July.
Special counsel Jack Smith is challenging Cannon’s dismissal at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where outside groups are calling for the court to assign a new judge in addition to reinstating the charges against the former president. And while the documents case is separate from Routh’s, Cannon’s conduct in Trump’s case was also at issue in Routh’s recusal motion, which noted “some rulings” issued by Cannon that “were favorable” to Trump.
That led the judge to broadly defend her Trump-friendly actions, writing that Routh’s motion “presents no facts or law warranting a departure from the general rule of no recusal, much less the ‘pervasive bias and prejudice’ necessary to trigger the exception to the general rule.” (Both Routh and the Republican presidential nominee have pleaded not guilty in their respective cases.)
Now, one could craft a distinction between the cases that leads to Cannon’s recusal from Routh’s case but not Trump’s. That would go something like: It’s one thing to issue deranged rulings (in Trump’s case) but another thing to then preside over the prosecution of the man charged with trying to kill that unique defendant who not only appointed her to the federal bench but could still make her a Supreme Court justice or attorney general (in Routh’s case).
But if Cannon were to have recused herself from Routh’s case, would that have implied that she can’t fairly handle Trump’s case if it’s reinstated? We’ll never know.
And it’s not like judges need special reason to reject any implication that they can’t do their jobs. But if Cannon was also aiming to help keep herself on the documents case by staying on Routh’s, that may come at the expense of needlessly tainting any conviction that comes in the latter historic case.
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