Daughter of a Cuban exile and nominated as a federal judge by Donald Trump on November 12, 2020
The lawyers of the former president of the United States Donald Trump demanded this Monday that the judge in charge of the lawsuit filed by the former president for the FBI search of his mansion in Florida not accept a request from the Government to continue with the review of the seized material.
“Don’t let the government bypass the process,” they said in a 21-page brief included today in the file of this case that monopolizes media attention in the midst of the pre-campaign for the presidential midterm elections scheduled for November.
According to Agencia EFE, the former president’s lawyers allege as one of the reasons for rejecting the Justice Department’s request to Colombian judge Aileen Cannon that “the government is unduly trying to criminalize the possession of the 45th president (of the United States) of his own presidential and personal records”.
Last week, Judge Cannon accepted a request by Trump for a special expert to review official documents, some labeled “top secret” or “classified,” found at the Mar-a-Lago mansion, a decision that the Department of Justice (DOJ) appealed in a Georgia court.
But pending the appeal, government lawyers want the judge to suspend the part of her order that says the Justice Department can no longer review material seized from Trump’s mansion or use it in the investigation until that the special expert does not complete his analysis or until further court order.
However, it notes that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence may continue its assessment of the potential risk to national security posed by the removal of classified documents from government custody.
The appointment of the expert (special master in English) will take time, according to analysts and experts.
In the brief presented today to Judge Cannon, the former president’s lawyers say the investigation is “both unprecedented and misguided.”
“In essence it is a dispute over the storage of documents that has gotten out of control,” they add.
The lawyers say Judge Cannon’s order, which the government has challenged in the Atlanta Court of Appeals, is “a sensible preliminary step toward restoring order amid chaos” and that “(the government) should not be allowed to Government) to skip the process and proceed directly to a predetermined conclusion.”
“The government generally notes the alleged urgent need to conduct a risk assessment test of the potential unauthorized disclosure of alleged ‘classified records,'” Trump’s lawyers say.
However, “there are no indications that the alleged ‘classified records’ have been disclosed to anyone,” they stress.
Who is Judge Aileen Cannon?
Aileen Mercedes Cannon is a Colombian judge of the Federal Court in Fort Pierce, Florida. She is from Cali and is 41 years old. The US media questioned that she was appointed by Trump, so it is believed that she could influence the investigation against the former president.
For its part, Univisión recalled that Cannon presided over the trial of Paul Hoeffer, the 60-year-old man who pleaded guilty last February to threatening to kill Democratic congressmen Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as a prosecutor. of district in Illinois.
The judge sentenced Hoeffer to 18 months in prison, less than half of the 3 and a half years in prison requested by prosecutors.
But the notoriety and alleged legal errors that some blame her decision in the case of the confidential documents found in Mar-a-Lago have caused many to question whether Cannon is prepared for the position she occupies and to what extent her decision was taken out of loyalty to Trump. Before becoming a federal judge, Cannon had not served as a judge on other courts.
The US media reported that Cannon, daughter of Cuban exile Mercedes Cubas and US citizen Michael Cannon, originally from Indiana and raised with an older sister in Miami (Florida), during her confirmation hearing in the Senate in July 2020, He said his mother taught him “what a blessing this country is and the importance of ensuring the rule of law for generations to come.”
