This Friday, a federal grand jury in Miami filed an indictment against former President Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Donald Trump was charged with 37 criminal counts, in a controversial case that sets a precedent in U.S. history.
Aileen Cannon will oversee the case along with Bruce Reinhart, the judge who issued the search warrant for the Mar-a-Lago club. Cannon, a Hispanic federal judge for the Southern District of Florida in 2020, was appointed by none other than Donald Trump himself.
Aileen Mercedes Cannon has an interesting past. She was born in Cali, Colombia, in 1981 to an American father and a Cuban mother. She grew up in Miami in a family of immigrants. She mastered the Spanish language from an early age. She was later educated at Duke University. She worked for a time for the Miami-based El Nuevo Herald, writing for the society column. Before going into law, she graduated in Fine Arts and even studied abroad in Spain.
TRUMP INDICTMENT DOCUMENT by Juan Pe
According to Bloomberg and the New York Times, Cannon joined the Federalist Society, a conservative organization that served as an advisor to Donald Trump on judicial matters. In 2008 she began her judicial career in California. She then worked in Florida, Iowa and Washington DC before returning to Florida. Then, in 2013, she began working as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida. At that time she was assigned drug, firearms and immigration cases.
It wasn't until 2019 that Senator Marco Rubio contacted Cannon to let her know he was willing to nominate her for the position of federal district judge in Florida. This information comes from a research article by Matt Dixon for Politico. After several interviews and initial contact, in May 2020, President Donald Trump nominated her to replace Judge Kenneth Marra. Despite being deemed unfit for the position by several media outlets, as many as 12 Democratic lawmakers voted in her favor and the American Bar Association ultimately decided she was fit for the job.
In 2022, Aileen sentenced a man to 18 months in jail for threatening then-Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, as well as several other progressive female legislators. She began her involvement in the Mar-a-Lago case in 2022. Since then, several Democrats have accused her of hindering the investigation.
As agreed upon in the document filed last Friday, Donald Trump and his team of lawyers will meet next Tuesday face-to-face with Judge Cannon for the first post-indictment phase of the case.
