When Aileen Mercedes Cannon was appointed a judge by Donald Trump three years ago, she could hardly have imagined she would preside over his trial.
But on Friday she set May 20, 2024 as the date to start the unprecedented federal criminal prosecution of a former president in her small Fort Pierce, Florida courtroom.
Her assignment to the high-stakes trial has added another layer of controversy to the case, in which Trump is charged with 37 counts of willfully keeping highly classified US documents in his Mar-a-Lago, Florida home, obstruction of justice and lying to federal law enforcement officials.
Some of the charges bring up to 20 years in prison, with Cannon to decide the sentencing if a jury finds Trump guilty.
The pressure is even higher because the trial will start in the middle of an already intense battle before the November 2024 presidential election, with Trump leading the race for the Republican nomination.
It remains to be seen how Cannon will accommodate the courtroom requirements and election campaign needs of the man who gave her the job.
Lifetime appointment
Cannon was relatively young — 38 years old — when Trump nominated her to the lifetime position in 2020.
Born in Cali, Colombia, she grew up in Florida. Her mother immigrated to the United States from Cuba as a child.
Cannon obtained her undergraduate degree at Duke University and her law degree from the University of Michigan, routinely ranked among the top 10 law schools in the country.
A member of the Federalist Society, which brings together conservative attorneys, judges and law experts, Cannon worked for three years at a private law firm in Washington and for seven years as an assistant US attorney prior to becoming a judge.
Random pick
Her selection to handle the Trump case was random, blindly drawn from the pool of several active federal judges in the Justice Department’s southern Florida district.
Some legal experts have argued she should have recused herself because she allegedly displayed bias towards Trump last year when she was assign a lawsuit he filed over the FBI raid to recover the Mar-a-Lago documents.
She has broad powers to determine the pace of the trial, and her May 20 start date comes smack in the middle of the presidential campaign.
If the trial is ongoing and Trump wins the November 2024 election, he could conceivably take action to intervene or even pardon himself upon taking office.
Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, said the presiding judge wields enormous power over a trial and plays a critical role in how it unfolds.
“Even in a run of the mill case, the judge can have a significant and sometimes even dispositive effect on proceedings,” Richman said.
Others contend that Cannon will ensure that he gets a fair shake.
“It’s impossible now for Trump to complain that he’s got a judge that is biased against him,” said Edward Foley, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University.
Thomas Holbrook, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said Cannon is in a “tough position.”
“Almost no matter what she does, she’s going to either feed into existing concerns about her potential bias or disappoint Trump supporters,” Holbrook said.
