Cuban-Colombian judge to preside over Trump classified documents trial

Aileen Mercedes Cannon, a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2020, will presided over his upcoming criminal trial at the Miami based U.S. District Courthouse in the Southern District of Florida.

Born in 1981 in Cali, Colombia to a Cuban mother whose family fled the 1959 Revolution, Cannon's family resettled in Miami where her mother ultimately married her father, a Colombian from Indiana. 

Once her family arrived in the United States, Cannon attended Ransom Everglades School, a private school in Miami. She graduated from Duke University with a Bachelors of Arts in 2003 after studying abroad for a summer in Spain, and went on to become a journalist at Miami's El Nuevo Herald, Spanish language component of The Miami Herald. She reportedly covered local festivals and lifestyle subjects such as flamenco dancing and yoga.

Shortly after her reporting time in Miami, the Cuban-Colombian attended law school at the University of Michigan School of Law, an institution ranked among the top 10 in the nation. There, she served as editor of the University of Michigan Law Reform, and was a quarterfinalist in the school's moot court competition, a highly celebrated event for law schools across the nation.

She graduated at the top of her class in 2007 with honors, magna cum laude. 

during her 2020 confirmation hearings, Cannon explained that she joined the Federalist Society because of a “diversity of viewpoints” and because she “found interesting the organization's discussions about the constitutional separation of powers, the rule of law, and the limited role of the judiciary to say what the law is—not to make the law.”

Cannon will step in to preside over Trump's trial after U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman presides over Tuesday's arraignment, a preliminary reading of the charges in which the former president will enter a plea. 

The former president is expected to plea not guilty to 37 felony counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified White House documents. The charges were filed as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing investigation, resulting in a 49-page indictment.

Those charges include accusations of Trump taking hundreds of classified documents after leaving the White House in January 2021 and keeping them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, and also obstructing U.S. attempts to recover the documents.

Cannon previously came under fire for appointing a Special Master to review documents seized in August 2022 by the FBI during the raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence.

She ruled at the time that the FBI did not have authority to use all of the seized documents, but the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled otherwise. 

Trump is expected to be released on his own recognizance at his Tuesday arraignment, a scene that will be controlled by metropolitan and federal law enforcement until the former president's motorcade leaves for Miami International Airport.

From there he will return to New Jersey to attend a fundraiser at his club in Bedminster to celebrate his 77th birthday on June 14. He will return to Miami once a future hearing or trial date is set in Tuesday's arraignment.