Recently, Trump-appointed Southern District of Florida District Court Judge Aileen Cannon once again saturated the media cycle, this time in connection to at least two of her law clerks who resigned from their positions.
AboveTheLaw co-founder David Lat first reported on the news in a piece published to his Substack late last week.
Now, Lat has published a new article that takes a deeper dive into the highly controversial Trump-appointed judge to take a close, hard look into how an “increasingly worried” Judge Aileen Cannon has “started to change” since being appointed to oversee one of the biggest criminal cases against Donald J. Trump, the very same man who appointed her to the position she enjoys today.
“Everything was going fine for Judge Cannon. And then, in August 2022, she was assigned Trump v. United States—the civil case that former president Donald Trump filed against the federal government, challenging the seizure of documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate and seeking the appointment of a special master to review them,” Lat writes. “In September 2022, Judge Cannon largely ruled in Trump’s favor, ordering the appointment of a special master. Her ruling was widely criticized, and in December 2022, she was unceremoniously reversed by the Eleventh Circuit.”
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According to Lat, this is what inspired the first clerk to part ways with Judge Cannon.
“The Trump v. United States debacle seriously damaged Judge Cannon’s reputation—and it also created a clerk problem. An incoming clerk from a top-three school, worried about a Cannon clerkship being a drag on their résumé, withdrew from the clerkship shortly after the Eleventh Circuit smackdown,” the new article continues. “This left Judge Cannon with a clerkship slot to fill for the 2023-2024 judicial year. So she asked one of her 2022-2023 clerks, whom I’ll call ‘Kari,’ to extend her one-year clerkship into a two-year position.”
However, Lat found upon his investigation that Kari would ultimately quit.
According to his article, another Cannon clerk would go on to make the same move.
“As fall turned to winter, conditions in chambers continued to worsen. Mary, whose clerkship had gotten off to a bad start, was working 80-hour weeks and having interpersonal conflict with the judge, whom she described to friends as ‘mean,'” he writes. “Mary began plotting her escape.”
Lat’s expansive Substack piece paints a picture of a Florida federal judge who has become “increasingly worried” and “started to change” ever since she was assigned to the Trump cases, and law clerks under her purview that could no longer tolerate her “micromanaging” management style under the pressure of these cases.
You can read Lat’s full deep dive on his Substack here.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
