Judge refuses to recuse herself from Florida Trump assassination case

By Alan Feuer / The New York Times

Aileen M. Cannon, the federal judge overseeing the prosecution of a man accused of trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump, rejected the man’s request that she remove herself from the case, saying on Tuesday that she has no relationship with Trump even though he appointed her to the bench and she has ruled in his favor in a separate criminal matter.

Judge Cannon denied the request by the defendant, Ryan Routh, in a brief decision issued in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla. Mr. Routh was arrested last month in West Palm Beach after Secret Service agents spotted him carrying a rifle in the bushes along the fence line of one of Trump’s golf courses.

Mr. Routh’s lawyers first asked Judge Cannon to remove herself from the case two weeks ago. In their initial request, they argued that Trump had “repeatedly praised” her rulings in a separate case in which he stood accused of illegally holding onto classified documents after he left office.

In an unexpected decision in that matter, Judge Cannon threw out all the charges against Trump in July, ruling against decades of legal precedent that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed the indictment, had been illegally appointed to his job.

But in her decision on Tuesday, Judge Cannon rebuffed the idea that she had been affected by Trump's praise. She said she had in fact never met or spoken to the former president except “in connection with his required presence” in her courtroom for hearings in the classified documents case.

“I have no control over what private citizens, members of the media, or public officials or candidates elect to say about me or my judicial rulings,” Judge Cannon wrote. “Nor am I concerned about the political consequences of my rulings or how those rulings might be viewed by ‘some in the media.’ ”

Referring to Trump, she added, “I have no relationship to the alleged victim in any reasonable sense of the phrase.”

Last week, Mr. Routh’s lawyers renewed their request to Judge Cannon to give up the assassination case by citing a recent ABC News report. According to that report, the judge’s name had appeared on an internal Trump campaign document listing potential staffing choices for legal jobs in places like the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office.

Two people briefed on the matter said that Judge Cannon’s name had appeared on an unofficial list compiled by some advisers to Trump who were not working on the transition team, with input from Boris Epshteyn, the former president’s top legal adviser.

While Judge Cannon did not address the possibility of being named to a White House post in her ruling, she rejected the idea that the “prospect of a judicial promotion” by Trump to a higher court might affect her “ability to be impartial.”

“A judge should not recuse herself based on ‘highly tenuous speculation,’ or operate on ‘rumors’ and ‘innuendos’ in publicized cases,” she wrote.

Judge Cannon also dismissed the notion that the cases involving Trump had been steered to her in an improper manner, calling statements to that effect “media rumors.”

“This case, like the prior cited cases involving former President Trump, were randomly assigned to me through the clerk’s random case assignment system,” she wrote. “Period. I will not be guided by highly inaccurate, uninformed or speculative opinions to the contrary.”

Even though Mr. Smith’s deputies have appealed Judge Cannon’s ruling that threw out the classified documents case, they have not yet tried to remove her from it.

Two outside groups of lawyers, however, have filed motions to the appeals court in Atlanta that sits over Judge Cannon asking for it to reassign the classified documents case to a new judge.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.