CNN
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Federal judge Aileen Cannon entered the public spotlight last summer when she oversaw court proceedings related to the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Now, the Trump-appointed federal judge has been initially assigned to oversee the former president’s new federal criminal case in Miami, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
If she remains on the case, Cannon would have wide latitude to control timing and evidence in the case and be able to vet the Justice Department’s legal theory.
Trump faces a total of 37 counts in special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into his alleged mishandling of classified documents, according to an indictment unsealed Friday – a stunning development that marks the first time a former president has faced indictment for federal crimes.
Trump is expected to appear in Miami federal court Tuesday to be read the charges against him. That is expected to happen before Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed the Mar-a-Lago search warrant in August.
Among the charges Trump faces are 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information. In addition, the former president is charged with one count each of conspiracy to obstruct justice; withholding a document or record; corruptly concealing a document or record; concealing a document in a federal investigation; scheme to conceal; and false statements and representations.
ABC News first reported the judicial assignments in the criminal case.
Trump nominated Cannon to the bench in May 2020, and the Senate confirmed her by a vote of 56-21 just days after the presidential election.
Cannon had largely stayed out of the national spotlight until she began handling the case the former president brought last year to challenge the Mar-a-Lago evidence collection. Her controversial decision to appoint a third-party “special master” to oversee the review of evidence gathered in the search was ultimately overturned by a conservative panel of judges on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which was critical of Cannon’s handling of the case.
That special master process had put the Justice Department’s investigation into the documents it obtained during the search on hold so the outside attorney could review the materials for any privilege issues.
“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote last year. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”
Prior to taking office, Cannon served as an assistant US attorney in Florida, where she worked in the Major Crimes Division and as an appellate attorney, according to written answers she gave to the Senate during her confirmation process.
Following graduation from the University of Michigan Law School, Cannon clerked for a federal judge and later practiced law at a firm in Washington, DC, where she handled a range of cases, including some related to “government investigations,” according to her statements given to the Senate in 2020.
