A Florida appeals court received more than 1,000 complaints about the federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case within just a week last month.
Many of the complaints have demanded Trump-appointed US District Judge Aileen Cannon remove herself from the Mar-a-Lago case and reassign it to a different judge, according to a notice filed with the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals.
Other complaints “also question the correctness of her rulings or her delays in issuing rulings in the case,” according to the notice from Chief Judge William Pryor.
More than 1,000 complaints were submitted to the court from May 16 through May 22, the date of Judge Pryor’s notice.
He ordered that the court clerk not accept any more complaints “to the extent they are similar to previously filed complaints,” according to the filing, which was first reported by CNBC.
The complaints follow accusations from Trump critics and legal observers that Judge Cannon is slow-walking the case to avoid a trial before the 2024 presidential election, including in a recent decision to indefinitely postpone proceedings by taking the May trial date off the calendar.
The complaints “appear to be part of an orchestrated campaign,” and officials have “considered and dismissed four of those orchestrated complaints as merits-related and as based on allegations lacking sufficient evidence to raise an inference that misconduct has occurred,” according to the judge.
Some of the complaints received by the court before May 16 “have been acted upon, and others will be acted upon in due course,” Judge Pryor wrote.
Neither the chief circuit judge nor judicial council have the authority to remove Judge Cannon.
On May 7, Judge Cannon scuttled the original May 20 trial date, writing that a host of issues around evidence and how to handle classified information still need to be determined before the trial can begin.
The former federal prosecutor – who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020 – argued that a pre-trial process through the end of July would “outweigh the best interest of the public and Defendants in a speedy trial.”
The former president faces 40 separate charges stemming from allegations that he withheld hundreds of classified documents after leaving the White House for his private Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida, then conspired to obstruct government attempts to retrieve the materials.
He has pleaded not guilty.
His co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, who are accused of helping Trump mishandle documents at the Florida property, have also pleaded not guilty.
After a jury in New York convicted him on 34 felony charges of falsifying records in connection with a hush money scheme to boost his chances of winning the 2016 election, Trump is set to face 53 other criminal charges in three separate jurisdictions.
But a series of appeals and delays have all but ensured that none of those cases will go to trial before Election Day.
On Monday, a Georgia appeals court agreed to hear Trump’s argument that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from trying his state-level election interference case. That appeals hearing is set for October 4, making it unlikely that a trial could commence before Election Day on November 5.
A decision from the US Supreme Court on whether Trump has “immunity” from charges in his federal election interference case could be imminent, but even if a decision is reached that allows the case to proceed, pretrial preparations are not expected to conclude until the fall.
