Donald Trump Just Put Judge Aileen Cannon ‘on the Spot’—George Conway

Former President Donald Trump put Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing his classified documents case, “on the spot” after he claimed the FBI was planning to assassinate him while searching his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022, according to conservative lawyer George Conway on Friday.

Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has pleaded not guilty to Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith’s 40 charges where it’s alleged that he retained classified materials after he left the White House in January 2021 and then obstructed the federal attempt to retrieve them from his Mar-a-Lago resort residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

A Trump campaign email sent to supporters earlier this week claimed that FBI agents were “authorized to shoot” Trump and “itching to do the unthinkable” during the raid, while the former president also suggested in a series of Truth Social posts that the Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Joe Biden had authorized his assassination. However, there is no evidence to support this claim.

Newsweek has reached out to the DOJ via online email form for comment.

It comes after a court filling was unsealed on Tuesday showing briefing notes for the Mar-a-Lago raid, which said: “Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice [DOJ] may use deadly force when necessary.”

However, the FBI in response released a statement, insisting the bureau followed “standard protocol” during the operation, which “includes a standard policy statement” on the use of force.

It said the Mar-a-Lago raid briefing “followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force. No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”

On Friday, in a motion filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Smith asked Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, to put the former president on a gag order due to his allegations about the FBI.

During a Friday interview with CNN, Conway, a Trump critic who was previously married to Trump’s former senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, discussed the former president’s claims amid Smith’s motion for a gag order as he stated it puts Cannon “on the spot” as he pointed to her “absolute bias.”

“This really puts Judge Cannon on the spot. This woman has absolutely completely shown an absolute bias against the government from day one. In multiple ways, she’s dragging her feet on this case and if she does not do something about this, I think the special counsel will use this as the opportunity to try and get the 11th Circuit to get rid of her. So she is really on the spot here,” he said.

He added: “Do you think she will do something? I don’t know, but she better because this is just completely outrageous. I mean it really is an attempt to incite violence against government agents based on the complete pathological lie and…obscene misreading of a standard document.”

Newsweek has also reached out to Trump’s campaign and Cannon’s office via email for comment.

Cannon has faced public scrutiny for issuing rulings favoring Trump, including delaying the case’s pre-trial schedule in a move that was seen to slow down the case.

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama during the Obama administration, also agreed in a series of posts to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday night that Cannon should act on Smith’s motion and gag the former president because his claims about the Mar-a-Lago raid “are dangerous” to FBI agents and their families.

“Judge Cannon should modify Trump’s conditions of release,” Vance wrote. “If she won’t, the Special Counsel’s office will have to pursue all possible means to prevent this Defendant from threatening law enforcement officers involved in the prosecution, just like they would in any other case.”

In a previous statement to Newsweek, Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign communications director, took aim at Smith’s motion and said it was evidence that “Crooked Joe Biden and his Hacks and Thugs are obsessed with trying to deprive President Trump and all American voters of their First Amendment rights.”

“Repeated attempts to silence President Trump during the presidential campaign are blatant attempts to interfere in the election,” Cheung said. “They are last ditch efforts of desperate Democrat Radicals running a losing campaign for a failed president.”