Aileen Cannon Made ‘Problematic’ Exception In Latest Ruling: Attorney

Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case, made a “problematic” exception in her latest ruling, an attorney has said.

Writing in her Civil Discourse blog, Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and frequent Trump critic, said that by refusing Trump’s proposal to redact witness statements in the case, she was putting witnesses at risk.

In June 2023, Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including U.S. nuclear secrets and plans for U.S. military retaliation in the event of an attack, and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. Prosecutors have said he took the documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and resisted repeated requests by federal officials to return them all.

On Sunday, Judge Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, issued an order granting Department of Justice prosecutor Jack Smith’s request that materials in the case that both parties want to be redacted will be redacted from the court’s public docket to protect grand jury secrecy and witness safety.

She ruled that where parties disagreed about whether to redact the material because of Trump’s claims of attorney-client privilege, she would accept it as privileged, pending reviews.

She also ruled that: “The Court does not authorize Defendant Trump’s proposed redactions to witness statements in Exhibit 9.”

Vance said that while “this may sound innocuous or even like it’s a ruling in the government’s favor,” the ruling was “particularly problematic” because revealing a witness testimony might expose them and put them at risk.

She wrote: “The Judge has already agreed to redact witnesses’ names from the motion because they would be exposed to risk if they were made public. Judge Cannon, as a former federal prosecutor, and based on specific arguments prosecutors made here, should understand that even when a name is withheld, revealing a witness’s testimony can be sufficient to identify them. She seems okay with that, though. That’s unacceptable in a case with a defendant like Trump.”

Newsweek contacted a representative for Trump by email to comment on this story.

Cannon has long faced criticism and calls to recuse herself from the case for making a number of decisions that seemingly favored the former president.

Earlier this month, for instance, Cannon indefinitely suspended the start of the trial while other legal disputes related to the case are settled. Vance said the case was delayed because “the Judge seems to have no appetite for justice in this matter.”