Aileen Cannon

On May 21, 2020, President Trump nominated Aileen Cannon to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and was confirmed on November 12, 2020.

Though relatively inexperienced, Cannon was fast-tracked to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a move that many legal observers saw as a strategic effort by Trump to stack the judiciary with loyalists. A former federal prosecutor and member of the conservative Federalist Society, Cannon has since emerged as one of the most controversial figures in Trump’s legal orbit.

Cannon’s handling of Trump’s classified documents case has drawn widespread scrutiny and condemnation. In 2022, she intervened in the Department of Justice’s investigation into Trump by granting his request for a special master to review materials seized during the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago — an extraordinary move that legal experts across the political spectrum called legally dubious. That ruling was swiftly overturned by a conservative appeals court, which accused Cannon of inventing special protections for the former president. Undeterred, she went further in 2024 by dismissing the classified documents case entirely, ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional — a decision that many saw as a legally weak justification to let Trump off the hook.

A Trump loyalist, Cannon has a pattern of using her position not to serve impartial justice, but to shield the former president from legal consequences.