A Trump Judge Under Scrutiny

When Judge Aileen Cannon was handed the job last spring of overseeing Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents, she was already under fire.

Many legal analysts as well as Trump critics assailed her for having issued a ruling in an early part of the inquiry that was favorable to him but so legally questionable that an appeals court chided her in overturning it.

Now Judge Cannon is facing a series of decisions that will further test her legal acumen and give an indication of how she views the case and its famous main defendant.

The biggest decision in front of the judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in his waning days in office, is when she will hold the trial. It is currently set to start on May 20, but will almost certainly be delayed.

How much of a delay she decides on — and whether she postpones the trial until after the election — will signal how much she intends to indulge Trump’s strategy of trying to run the clock out.

Trump already faces trial next month in New York on charges related to hush-money payments to a porn star, but the timing of the other proceedings against him is up in the air, including the federal case in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election and a case in state court in Georgia on similar charges.