Aileen Cannon suffered a double blow within two weeks

South Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon has suffered two setbacks in two weeks: Republicans and Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) called for her to be removed from the classified documents case, and a new report alleges she concealed her attendance at three paid seminars.

Cannon recently came under heavy criticism after some Republicans accused her of mishandling former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case and urged a Florida appeals court to remove her from the case. Newsweek previously reported.

The district judge, appointed by Trump in 2020, presided over Trump’s lawsuit to review the materials seized at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, as well as the criminal proceedings concerning the classified documents following his indictment in 2023.

Newsweek I have emailed Cannon’s office for comment and will update this article if I receive a response.

Cannon’s calls for a firing date back to her tenure, when she presided over a federal criminal case against Trump in 2023. In that case, the former president faces 40 charges alleging he mishandled and stored sensitive materials at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House in 2021. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all counts against him and called the proceedings a “political witch hunt.”

The district judge dismissed the case in July on the grounds that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.

In an amicus curiae brief supporting Smith calling for Cannon’s removal from the classified documents case, Republicans claimed the judge made “serious errors” and urged the court to appeal his decision.

The letter includes former government officials, law professors and pro-democracy groups. It is part of the ethics committee CREW’s call for Cannon’s dismissal in a Sept. 3 statement. The committee said Cannon should be reinstated in the federal secrets case against Trump if the appeals court reverses its decision and remands.

The organization claimed that Cannon’s actions in the case benefited Trump, including her decision to grant Trump’s request for a special counsel to review the documents by invoking executive privilege, her appeal to the jury to find in Trump’s favor, and her eventual dismissal of the case.

In the press release, CREW President Noah Bookbinder said, “Judge Cannon has demonstrated her blatant bias in favor of Donald Trump at every possible opportunity.”

“She made this case more difficult than the law requires at every stage, and then she dismissed it on largely unprecedented grounds, handing Trump a significant victory. Should the court overturn her decision, it must also ensure that the case is reassigned so that it can proceed fairly and expeditiously and restore credibility to the federal court system.”

A report published Tuesday by ProPublica alleges that Cannon violated a 2006 rule that requires judges to report attendance at paid seminars that could influence decisions and to disclose attendance at such events on forms within 30 days of the event.

The ProPublica report alleges that Cannon failed to disclose that she attended a banquet at George Mason University’s Law and Economics Center in May 2023 and also attended legal colloquia hosted by George Mason in Sage Lodge, Montana, in 2021 and 2022.

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