Trump judge Aileen Cannon won’t recuse herself from Ryan Routh case

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon owes her lifetime appointment to the man Ryan Routh is accused of trying to kill.

FORT PIERCE — Despite concerns about her impartiality, a federal judge dismissed the complaint Donald Trump Classified case documents will not forward the case against Ryan Routha man accused of trying to kill him.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order Tuesday denying Routh’s request to withdraw from his case. In the order, she maintained that she had no ties to Trump and had no intention of allowing opposing allegations to undermine her ability to oversee the proceedings.

Her order allayed concerns raised two weeks earlier by Routh’s public defender team, Kristy Militello and Renee Sihvola. In their motion, lawyers said they were confident Cannon would act impartially, but worried members of the public might think otherwise.

Cannon has been criticized for rulings that appear to favor the former president without legal basis. In 2022, it granted a request that temporarily blocked investigators from accessing documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. Two years later she He dismissed all 40 criminal charges against him.

The appeals court overturned the previous ruling and is considering doing the same with the second one. These are the same rulings that Trump praised during his campaign for a second term.

Militello and Sihvola cited those rulings and Trump’s comments about Cannon in their motion to dismiss. Legal experts have suggested that people may believe Cannon has a “personal sense of loyalty and gratitude” to Trump, who, if re-elected, could appoint her to a higher court.

Cannon called these arguments fraught, speculative and unsupported by law.

“I have no control over what private citizens, members of the media, public officials or candidates choose to say about me or my court decisions,” the judge wrote. “I am also not concerned about the political consequences of my rulings or how these rulings may be perceived by “certain media outlets.” “

Cannon promised to administer justice impartially, consistent with her judicial oath. She also rejected the notion that the withdrawal was necessary to allay suspicions that she was deliberately assigned to the case.

“This case, like the previously cited cases involving former President Trump, was 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, quite the contrary.”

Ryan Routh remains in federal custody as a judge considers his recall

While the Trump secret documents case involved issues of national security and obstruction of justice, Routh is dealing with attempted murder. The charges are one of several federal prosecutors brought in the wake of his Sept. 15 arrest. If convicted, Cannon could face life in prison.

Routh also faces charges of stalking, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime and assault on a federal officer. He did not plead guilty in any of them.

Investigators believe Routh was traveling from Greensboro, North Carolina, to West Palm Beach on August 14. According to records obtained from his cellphone, Routh visited the Trump International Golf Club in suburban West Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago multiple times during the month before the suspected attack.

On September 15, Routh observed Trump International for 12 hours, standing among tall hedges and behind a chain-link fence with a loaded rifle and a bag of mini sausages. Prosecutors described Routh’s kit as a “sniper’s nest” equipped with two bulletproof plates and a scope taped to his gun.

A U.S. Secret Service agent spotted Routh near the sixth hole of the course. Trump, who was not yet in sight of the gunman, was on the fifth hole. The agent called out to the gunman, then noticed the barrel of a rifle “pointed directly at him.” The agent fired several shots.

None landed. Routh, who investigators say did not return fire, fled on foot to a black Nissan Xterra parked across the street. A nearby driver reported that he made eye contact with Routh as he fled. The witness took a photo of Routh’s car and captured all but the last digit of his license plate.

Authorities arrested Routh along Interstate 95 in Martin County. Inside his Xterra, agents discovered two additional license plates, six cell phones – one of which contained the Google search query “how to travel from Palm Beach County to Mexico” – 12 pairs of gloves, a passport and a handwritten list of places Trump was scheduled to appear. .

Prosecutors published excerpts from a handwritten letter, most likely written by Routh, addressed to “The World.” It contained the following content:

“It was an attempted assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I failed you. I gave everything I could muster. Now it’s up to you to complete this task, and I will offer $150,000 to anyone who can complete it.”

Other parts of the letter seem to suggest that the author intended the attempt to fail. During Routh’s arrest hearing, Militello suggested that he had staged the ordeal as a publicity stunt rather than to cause harm.

Routh, whose trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 10, is in federal custody.

Hannah Phillips covers criminal justice for The Palm Beach Post. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Help support our journalism and sign up today.