Aileen Cannon Decision Creates ‘Enormous Problem’—Legal Analyst

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case has created an “enormous problem” ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to legal analyst Glenn Kirschner.

Speaking with MSNBC, Kirschner criticized U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon for failing to set a trial date in the case involving Trump’s 40 felony counts accusing him of mishandling sensitive materials that were retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“Donald Trump was indicted a year ago, and there is no trial dates,” said Kirschner, a frequent critic of Trump and former federal prosecutor. “The reason that poses an enormous problem is because all intermediate deadlines—the deadline to file motions, to argue motions resolved—all of those intermediate deadlines on the set trial date.”

Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020, indefinitely delayed the trial last month, pending the resolution of pretrial litigation issues concerning the classified evidence used by prosecutors in the case. The judge has faced accusations of showing partiality toward the former president, including by choosing to delay the trial until after Election Day in November, as Trump is running for a second term in the White House.

“That, quite frankly, is depriving the American people of their right to have this trial resolved … in advance of the election,” Kirschner continued on Wednesday. “So when people go to the polls, they know whether they’re voting for a convicted felon who compromised our national security by keeping classified documents and defense information unlawfully at his Florida home, or whether they’re voting for a completely exonerated man who has been found innocent by a jury of his peers.”

Newsweek on Wednesday reached out to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida for comment via email, where Cannon is overseeing Trump’s case.

Trump has faced a total of four criminal indictments while running for reelection. Last month, he became the first former U.S. president in history to be criminally convicted after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The former president has also been indicted over his activities surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and is also accused in attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. Trump has also pleaded not guilty to all charges in these cases.

On Tuesday, the judge who presided over Trump’s hush money trial in New York City, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, lifted parts of a gag order placed on the former president ahead of the first presidential debate of 2024, which is scheduled for Thursday in Atlanta. Trump will now be allowed to comment on witnesses and jurors involved in the case.

Kirschner said Wednesday that he believes Merchan “made the right call” by loosening Trump’s gag order now that the trial has come to an end, although, he added, prosecutors should be “watching” Thursday’s debate “closely” to see what the former president says about witnesses and jurors.

“And I would put all of it in my sentencing memo in advance of the July 11 sentencing hearing, because the danger that a defendant poses to the community or to others is heartland sentencing concerns,” Kirschner added.