AC
Entry openedOct 2026
Last updatedOct 2026
Documented items2
Primary sources3
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Responsible
Aileen M. Cannon
U.S. District Judge, Southern District of Florida, 2020–
Appointed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in November 2020, after the election he had lost. She presided over both the civil suit he brought over the Mar-a-Lago search and the criminal prosecution that followed.
Documented conduct
Jul 15, 2024
Dismissed the prosecution without reaching the evidence
Dismissed the Espionage Act prosecution of the man who had appointed her, holding that the special counsel's appointment violated the Appointments Clause — a ground no other court had accepted. The merits were never tried. The special counsel appealed and dropped the appeal after the 2024 election, so no court has ruled on whether the documents were unlawfully kept.
Source: United States v. Trump, S.D. Fla., order of July 15 2024
Dec 1, 2022
The special master order, vacated for want of jurisdiction
In September 2022 she granted the former president's request to appoint a special master over the material seized at Mar-a-Lago and barred the government from using it in its investigation. On December 1 a unanimous Eleventh Circuit panel vacated the order and directed that his suit be dismissed, holding that she had "improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction". The court wrote: "We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so."
Source: Trump v. United States, 11th Cir., December 1 2022