Trump’s Case Put the Judge, Aileen Cannon, Under a Spotlight

When former President Donald J. Trump appointed Aileen M. Cannon to serve as a judge in the Southern District of Florida, very few people knew who she was.

But that changed when she was randomly assigned an unprecedented case involving a former president — the same president who appointed her.

Judge Cannon grew up in Miami with a Cuban mother and American father. She attended Duke University and the University of Michigan Law School, which is when she joined the conservative Federalist Society and went on to clerk for a conservative appeals court judge. She then worked in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of Florida, most often writing appellate motions. She is married with two children.

In 2020, someone from the office of Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, asked her to apply to be a potential federal judge. And in November 2020, she became one of the youngest judges on the bench in the Southern District of Florida. Though some senators raised questions about the depth of her experience, she was confirmed in a 56-21 vote.

Before she was assigned Mr. Trump’s case, she had little experience with criminal trials. Her impartiality came into question with an early decision she made in the case, insisting that an independent mediator should review the thousands of documents the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized in 2022 from Mr. Trump’s private residence and club in Palm Beach, Fla. That review would have placed the case on hold for months. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned her decision in a swift rebuke.

Since then, questions have swirled about her qualifications to oversee such a high-profile case. In June 2023, she rejected suggestions from two other more senior judges in the district to