Eleventh Circuit Faces Aileen Cannon ‘Leak’ Problem: Attorney

An appeal court cannot ignore that Donald Trump’s trial judge has been listed as his potential attorney general in a supposedly leaked document, a lawyer has said.
​​Michael Popok said there was an aura of impropriety in Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida, especially now that she has been named as his possible attorney general.
Trump was facing 40 federal charges in Cannon’s court over his alleged handling of sensitive materials seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House in January 2021. He was also accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to retrieve them.
The Republican presidential nominee had pleaded not guilty and said the case was part of a political witch hunt.
Trump appointed Cannon as a federal judge when he was president. In her dismissal of the charges against him on July 15, Cannon noted that there is no constitutional backing for appointing Jack Smith, a “private citizen”, as a Department of Justice prosecutor in charge of all Donald Trump’s federal indictments.
Smith is now appealing that decision before the 11th Circuit appeal court.
Newsweek sought email comment from the Trump campaign and Cannon’s office on Monday.
ABC News has reported that Cannon was recently listed as number two in Trump’s list of potential attorneys general.
Trump has spoken highly of Cannon in speeches and publicly thanked her for dismissing the charges against him.
Speaking on the Legal AF podcast on the liberal MeidasTouch news network, Popok said the appeal court cannot ignore the fact that Cannon is high up on Trump’s list of potential attorneys general.
ABC News reported that it received a leaked copy of the list, although Popok believes it may have been deliberately released by the Trump campaign to test public reaction.
“The 11th circuit, in order to try to protect the integrity of the criminal justice system, and people’s perception of the fairness of that system, have to do something about a problem named Aileen Cannon,” he said.
MeidasTouch has been stridently opposed to Trump in its reporting.
Popok added that the Trump campaign has not denied the attorney general list is accurate, thereby putting pressure on the 11th circuit to address Cannon’s conflict of interest in the case.
“The 11th circuit’s got to say: ‘Aileen, you were asked by some of the senior lawyers, senior judges in your own district, not to take this case originally. You’ve got to go,” Popok said.
“The appearance of impropriety is overwhelming here. Even if she didn’t make the decision to dismiss the indictment in order to curry favor with Donald Trump, it certainly looks to any rational human being like there was that quid pro quo. And so she’s got to go.”
He added that the 11th circuit has “more than enough ammunition” to remove Cannon from the Trump case.