Calls are growing for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon after an appeals court overturned her order appointing a special master in a high-profile case involving former President Donald Trump.
Cannon, a Trump appointee who serves as a judge in the Southern District of Florida, had granted the former president’s request for a special master to review documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago residence by the FBI on August 8.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Florida-based U.S. Court of the Appeals for the 11th Circuit overturned Cannon’s decision following an application from the Department of Justice (DOJ), which had opposed a special master.
The judges made the decision in a strongly worded ruling that said that while the search warrant for Trump’s home was “extraordinary” it did not give “the judiciary licence to interfere in an ongoing investigation.”
Cristian Farias, who has written about law and justice for publications including Vanity Fair and The New York Times, tweeted: “Trump judge Aileen Cannon gets eviscerated here” and quoted from the three judges’ ruling.
“The law is clear. 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,” the panel wrote.
Other social media users directed criticism at Cannon and a Change.org petition has been set up calling for the judge to be impeached. It had garnered more than 1,900 signatures when reviewed by Newsweek early on Friday morning.
Mike Sacks, visiting scholar at the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy at Duke University, tweeted: “Cannon avoided death threats from Trump’s minions and managed to stay in Trump’s good graces by bending the law to protect him.”
“I’d say mission accomplished for her…if Trump runs and wins again. Otherwise she lit her entire judicial reputation and future on fire for nothing,” Sacks said.
The Change.org petition accuses Cannon of having “single-handedly blocked a criminal investigation, usurping clear cut executive power. This is a clear-cut impeachable offense.”
