Experts and former officials want Judge Aileen Cannon removed from the case involving Trump's secret documents

A number of former government officials, law professors and democracy groups are calling for Judge Aileen Cannon to be removed from the criminal case against former President Donald Trump over classified documents, citing decisions they say created the appearance of bias.

Cannon's opponents include former Missouri Republican Rep. Tom Coleman, former New Jersey Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and several former Republican presidential officials. They want the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which is hearing special counsel Jack Smith's appeal after Cannon dismissed the case, to hear their arguments not only to overturn her decision but also to assign the case to another judge.

In a brief filed Tuesday by the government watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and others, Cannon is essentially accused of using her rulings to create the impression that she does not believe that former presidents are equal before the law.

“Their judgments and other conduct give the impression of an unshakable conviction that subjecting a former president to ordinary criminal proceedings is an intolerable insult to his dignity,” they wrote.

Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, ruled on July 15 that Smith's appointment as special counsel by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland was unlawful and therefore all charges against Trump for improper handling of classified information must be dropped.

The ruling diverged from the rulings of all other courts considering the issue after both Democratic and Republican administrations appointed special counsels and independent advisers to oversee politically sensitive investigations with greater independence. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence in the Supreme Court's July 1 ruling on presidential immunity, questioning the legality of special counsels.

“Pattern of untenable decisions”

A brief signed by Coleman and Whitman, along with other former officials and the democracy-focused nonprofit State Democracy Defenders Action, accuses Cannon of making a “pattern of untenable decisions” that create the appearance of bias. The critics in that brief, who asked the 11th Circuit to assign the case to another judge, specifically pointed to Cannon's decision to dismiss the case, as well as an earlier ruling that temporarily blocked investigators from examining documents seized at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.

The 11th Federal Court of Justice overturned the earlier ruling in a sharply worded decision in 2022, calling it “a radical reorganization of our jurisprudence” and a violation of “fundamental restrictions on the separation of powers.”

The second brief was filed Tuesday by CREW along with former federal judge Nancy Gertner and two law professors who have written on judicial ethics and conduct, Stephen Gillers of New York University and James J. Sample of Hofstra University.

That group took aim not only at the two rulings highlighted in the first brief, but also at Cannon's nearly year-long delaying tactics, which he allegedly spent dragging out the case by offering hearings on “virtually every theory Trump's lawyer could come up with” before hastily dismissing the case following a legal comment by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on July 1.

This is not the first time that Cannon's oversight has come under criticism in this case.

According to a New York Times report, Cannon rejected proposals from two other judges to recuse herself from the case when it was first assigned to her. Cecilia Altonaga, a George W. Bush appointee who is chief judge of the Southern District of Florida federal court Cannon presides over, told Cannon it would be a bad image if she presided over a trial in the case after the controversy surrounding her overturned conviction had hampered investigators.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Former officials seek to remove Judge Aileen Cannon from Trump documents case