Born in Cali, Colombia but raised in Miami to a Cuban mother and an American father from Indiana, Aileen Cannon has been assigned to oversee the classified documents’ case against former President Donald Trump.
Judge Cannon was nominated to the federal bench in 2019 by then President Trump and confirmed by the Senate in 2020. She was randomly selected amongst four federal judges in South Florida.
The Fort Pierce-based judge has already ruled favorably for Trump during an earlier hearing of Trump’s civil case challenging the FBI seizing the classified documents in Mar-a-Lago last year. She would later be rebuked by an appellate court and those favorable decisions were overturned.
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Cannon will be the trial judge overseeing the case and will not be present on Tuesday's hearing. Instead, magistrate judge Jonathan Goodman will preside over the arraignment of the former president.
She will, however, have the authority to review the magistrate's ruling upon motion by either side.
"This will be the most consequential and most watched prosecution in American history," said Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law to NBC News. “Will enough of the public accept the verdict, whatever it is? Or will they see any result as political? Answers to those questions are as important as the verdict."
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Having graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan School of Law, Cannon began her legal career as a clerk for Federal Appeals judge in Iowa, and then at the offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, an elite law firm based out of Washington D.C.
In 2013, Cannon returned to Florida where she began her work as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida in the major crimes and appellate divisions.
In 2020, Trump nominated her as a federal judge with the backing of Sen. Marco Rubio, where she pledged to uphold the rule of law during her confirmation hearing.
When FBI agents raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022 for the classified documents, Cannon was, as well, randomly assigned to oversee the case.
Cannon made some controversial rulings in that first case, where she ruled in favor of Trump’s request to appoint a ‘Special Master’ to review whether the documents taken by the FBI and Department of Justice, were protected by executive privilege. She also temporarily blocked parts of the DOJ’s investigation into the documents.
Here’s what we know on the 42-year-old judge:
- Born in Cali, Colombia to a Cuban mother, who fled the island during the 1959 Communist revolution, and a father from Indiana.
- She was raised in Miami and attended Ransom Everglades, a private school in Coconut Grove, where she participated in after school sports such as swimming and water polo.
- After high school, she went on to study at Duke University in North Carolina, spending a semester in Spain and began interning for El Nuevo Herald during the summer of 2002.
- She would later earn her law degree magna cum saude from the University of Michigan.
- She joined the Federalist Society as a law student in 2005 and has maintained ties to the group throughout her career.
- She has practiced law for 15 years and while most of her career has been spent as a federal prosecutor, she has limited trial experience due to her focus on appellate work.
- She is based out of Fort Pierce
