A man wears a mask of former President Trump in front of a courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida.
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Judge Erin Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, continues to make decisions that have baffled many legal observers.
Last month, Cannon postponed the start of the trial indefinitely. She spent months making routine decisions.
Trump is accused of taking classified and top-secret material to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House and then engaging in a conspiracy to hide the documents from federal investigators.
this Trump’s trial The team wanted to know what people who had served on the federal bench thought of Cannon’s decision, so we called retired federal judge Shira Scheindlin. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, she served as a federal judge for more than two decades.
NPR reached out to Judge Cannon’s office for response and received a statement from the court saying their judge does not comment on pending cases.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview Highlights
Scott Detrow: From your observations, what struck you most about the way Judge Cannon handled this case?
Sheila Scheindlin: What stood out to me was how she continually delayed the case instead of moving it forward. I would say she did this in two ways. One is that she cannot rule effectively. She insisted on the motion. She leaves these things unresolved. She can’t seem to decide things. The most experienced judges, and certainly I think of myself after 27 years, are trying to know which motions do require further consideration and argument and which motions, you know, instinctively you can honestly say, in one word: denied. You can dominate from the bench.
The second thing that stands out to me is her distaste for government and her penchant for advocacy. I’m not saying this ultimately determines how she rules, but she seems to have a visceral dislike of Jack Smith and his team. She criticized them constantly. She always comes across as sharp and sarcastic towards them, but she almost never does this to defenders.
Detro: I wanted to ask about decision-making – that’s the first thing you talked about. Because a lot of facts about confidential documents have been said in this trial, cases about confidential documents will take longer than other types of cases because there are important issues that have to be resolved in terms of procedure and approach. Presented at trial. You’re saying it goes beyond that – it’s just that she asked a lot of basic questions and she didn’t answer them, and do you think that’s striking?
Scheindlin: I mean, when your case involves highly confidential documents, it’s more complicated to review those documents. They must be done in a safe space. So it’s complicated, I understand. But that doesn’t fully justify how long it took her to move the case forward. It’s complicated, but it’s been done many times. She’s just ineffective.
Detro: We all know that President Trump’s legal strategy includes delaying the case in the hope that if he is re-elected as president, the case against him will be concluded. Do you have a gut feeling from everything you’ve seen, is this a matter of Judge Cannon’s experience or is this something that’s being done to help those delays?
Scheindlin: I’m not really sure these are two different options. They probably came together in her mind. I think her lack of experience made her insecure about her rulings. She was testing. But the motivation may have something to do with deliberately stalling long enough to ensure this doesn’t happen before the election. I’m not saying there are bad motives for doing this. There are some commentators who say, you know, if he were president, he would elevate her to a higher court and so on. I don’t think it looks like a quid pro quo.
But maybe she was just saying, “This can wait until after the election. I don’t want this to impact the election, so I’m going to take my time.” That may have been intentional – I don’t have that feeling – but I do have a feeling that she Inexperience and insecurity.
Supporters and non-supporters of former US President Donald Trump stand outside the Alto Lee Adams Old United States Courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida on March 14. Visited the court case.
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Detro: What do you think is the appropriate way to treat a criminal defendant in your court who is a former President of the United States and is running for President again? Do you think a judge holding this position should consider an election? Do the American people deserve a verdict before the election, or does that not matter to you in a criminal court?
Scheindlin: I don’t think it matters to me. I think you do your job well. So when I think about Judge Merchin, I don’t think he’s trying to rush this before the election so voters know whether this person is a felon or not. I’m not sure if he was slowing down on purpose to avoid public knowledge. It’s just that one person knows how to conduct a criminal trial because he’s experienced and a good, organized judge, and one person doesn’t seem to know. But having said that, you never know what’s going on deep inside someone’s heart. I think it’s more important to understand how to conduct complex experiments.
Detro: I’m wondering how concerned you are at this moment about the rule of law in this country and the different ways in which it is being attacked from all sides. A former president says this is a rigged system, a political system where people are trying to accuse him of crimes to stop him from being president. There are many liberal-leaning voters in this country who are deeply cynical about the U.S. Supreme Court. A president’s son was just convicted in another federal court, and then Republicans made all sorts of criticisms there. I feel like every direction you come from, you have serious and real criticisms, right or wrong, of the rule of law in this country. I’m wondering, how worried are you about all this partisan criticism at this moment in a country that’s based on the rule of law?
Scheindlin: I think partisan criticism affects the public’s perception of the effectiveness of the court system. I think they lost a lot of faith in the U.S. Supreme Court because of the revelations about Justice Alito and Justice Thomas. But judging from the hush money case and the Hunter Biden case, this system actually works quite well. I may not agree with either outcome, but the jury system worked and made the decision, and everyone was treated the same, which is a good thing, whether your last name is Biden or Trump.
