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(CN) — Former President Donald Trump’s apparent adoration for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon isn’t enough to justify her recusal from the case of Trump’s would-be assassin, the judge ruled Tuesday.
In a 7-page decision, Cannon declined to toss herself from the case over concerns from Ryan Routh, the 58-year-old man accused of plotting to assassinate Trump last month, about the judge’s “relationship to the alleged victim.”
“Defendant cites a series of factors which he believes, when viewed in their totality, create an appearance of partiality. None warrants recusal, whether examined individually or together,” Cannon wrote Tuesday
Routh was arrested in West Palm Beach in September after authorities say he camped outside Trump’s golf course with food and a rifle for nearly 12 hours. He was charged with five criminal counts, including attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate and gun charges.
After his case was assigned to Cannon, a conservative judge who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020, Routh moved for her recusal from the “unprecedented” case.
“Your honor thus owes her lifetime appointment to the alleged victim in this criminal case,” Routh said in the recusal motion filed this month.
It was that, Routh claimed, along with Trump’s repeated praise of Cannon for her handling of his classified documents indictment, that threatens the judge’s “requisite appearance of impartiality.” Cannon disagreed.
“It is understood that appointment to the bench by a litigant, or in this case by an alleged victim, does not, without more, ‘create in reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances that a reasonable inquiry would disclose, a perception that [the judge’s] ability to carry out judicial responsibilities with integrity, impartiality, and competence would be impaired,’” she wrote.
Cannon is the same judge that controversially dismissed Trump’s federal indictment in Florida this year. In that case, Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents after his presidency by stashing them at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach.
Trump repeatedly lauded Cannon after she dropped the case, saying during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that she was a “highly respected” judge for dropping the “fake documents case” against him.
But that doesn’t justify her recusal, Cannon ruled. She said that she’s never even met Trump and has no relationship with him whatsoever, despite Routh suggesting otherwise.
“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,” 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.’”
Cannon’s dismissal of Trump’s indictment raised eyebrows in the legal community. Routh acknowledged as much in his recusal bid, claiming the judge issued “some rulings that were favorable” to Trump, several of them “characterized by some in the media as unorthodox.”
In 2022, Cannon kneecapped the federal probe against Trump by requiring prosecutors to run seized documents through a third party before using them in the case. That ruling was quickly overturned in the 11th Circuit, however.
Cannon also delayed the start of trial indefinitely earlier this year; the case was initially slated to begin in May.
Those rulings — while immensely beneficial to Trump — hardly reflect a “pervasive bias and prejudice” that would be necessary to warrant her recusal from Routh’s case, Cannon ruled. She rebuked Routh’s claim that her presiding over his case would lead to speculation that Trump-related cases are being assigned to her in a “non-random manner.”
“This case, like the prior cited cases involving former President Trump, were randomly assigned to me through the clerk’s random case assignment system. Period,” Cannon wrote. “I will not be guided by highly inaccurate, uninformed, or speculative opinions to the contrary.”
Cannon called it a “strained assumption to begin with” that Routh’s case bears any meaningful similarity to other cases involving Trump, slamming shut Routh’s bid to draw a new judge in the case that could see him behind bars for life if convicted.
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