An anonymous report claiming that Judge Aileen Cannon is on President Trump’s shortlist for attorney general could be kryptonite for her prospects as the presiding judge on his Mar-a-Lago criminal case. 

The report, from ABC News, alleges that if Trump wins the election he is considering asking Judge Cannon to serve as America’s top law enforcement official.  Judge Cannon is allegedly second on that list, beyond only the one time head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton.

ABC News did not disclose the source of the report. The network is well sourced in the special counsel’s office, and its moderators were accused of overt bias in favor of Vice President Harris during the presidential debate.

Trump has denounced ABC News as even worse than NBC News, which includes MSNBC, and his lawsuit against ABC News and its on-air personality George Stephanopoulos —  for saying he was found liable for rape —  has entered the deposition phase.

The disclosure comes as the 11th United States Appeals Circuit readies for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appeal of her decision dismissing the case. The prospect that Judge Cannon could be in for an advancement during a second term for Trump has been raised in another case, one involving not Trump but one of his would-be assassin, Ryan Routh.

Judge Cannon has been randomly assigned his case, and Mr. Routh has requested that she  be removed. Mr. Routh cites the possibility that if he becomes  president “he would have authority to nominate Your Honor to a federal judgeship on a higher court were a vacancy to arise” — meaning the Supreme Court. He claims that her ties to Trump mean that she would be biased in her handling of the prosecution of the man who is accused of plotting to slay him.

The judge on Tuesday rejected that logic, writing that she has “never spoken to or met former President Trump except in connection with his required presence at an official judicial proceeding, through counsel. I have no ‘relationship to the alleged victim’ in any reasonable sense of the phrase.” She derided as “media rumors” speculation over a possible promotion if the 45th president becomes the 47th one. 

Judge Cannon’s ruling that Attorney General Garland appointed Mr. Smith unlawfully and that the blunder rendered the documents case defective was a stunning victory for the 45th president that upended the case that many observers reckoned was the strongest of the four arrayed against Trump. Mr. Garland went on television to accuse her of committing a “basic mistake about the law” for discerning a threat to “structural liberty.”

The finding that Mr. Garland lacked statutory authority to appoint Mr. Smith without confirmation by the Senate was but the most dramatic in a line of rulings handed down by Judge Cannon that have tilted toward Trump.

 In an earlier phase of the case she appointed a special master to chaperone the government’s collection of evidence from the Palm Beach manse. The 11th Circuit overruled her and reasoned that her logic “would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

Judge Cannon, who was born in Colombia, was appointed to the federal bench by Trump in 2020, in the final months of his presidency. Before acceding to the bench, she served as an assistant United States attorney in Florida.

She has been at loggerheads with Mr. Smith throughout the pendency of the case, with possible jury instructions and witness secrecy serving as flashpoints. The special counsel also bristled at the deliberate pace of the proceedings.

Her dismissal of the charges, though, shifts the case to the appellate riders who once accused her of engineering a “radical reordering of our case law limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations.”

If the 11th Circuit reverses her again, the case would be returned to her courtroom for further proceedings. No trial date has been set. Mr. Smith has long pushed for an expedited schedule. Whoever loses before the circuit riders is likely to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Smith has only asked the 11th Circuit to reverse Judge Cannon, not to overrule her. The case that her time atop the case ought to end though, is before the appellate court — courtesy of amici curiae like Laurence Tribe and George Conway.

They contend that Judge Cannon’s ruling “falls far outside the range of reasonable judicial decision making” and attests to a “pattern of unsupportable” rulings and  “inexplicable handling of procedural matters.” They argue that the case should be reassigned on remand. 

Federal law permits a higher court to take that drastic step  if a lower court judge has “engaged in conduct that gives rise to the appearance of . . .  a lack of impartiality in the mind of a reasonable member of the public.” The standard is a demanding one, and adverse decisions of the kind Judge Cannon delivered to Mr. Smith would not be sufficient. Neither is the mere fact that Trump appointed Judge Cannon. 

The 11th Circuit, though, could choose to exercise its supervisory authority sua sponte, meaning without being asked by one of the parties. Such power was exercised by the Second United States Appeals Circuit when it removed Judge Shira Scheindlin from Floyd v. City of New York, a case involving the  “stop, question and frisk policy” then employed by New York City. The 11th Circuit could also consider the issue already surfaced by Messrs. Tribe, Conway, and a liberal legal organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, is one of the groups that was agitating to have President Trump disqualified from office under the 14th Amendment. When the matter finally got to the Supreme Court, supporters of that scheme were humiliated by a landmark unanimous decision of the Nine finding that the 14th amendment could not be used against him.

Trump and Mr. Smith have now submitted to the 11th Circuit their arguments for whether Judge Cannon’s ruling ought to be upheld or reversed. No date has yet been set for oral arguments. If Trump wins the election, he is likely to insist that his attorney general fire Mr. Smith and drop the appeal, though the special counsel could elect to resist his dismissal. If Trump loses, the prosecutor would have years to shepherd the case through appeal.

The 11th Circuit, though, could reason that the chatter around Judge Cannon’s future is exactly the kind of patina of partiality that merits reassignment, even if the whispers are not of her own making. ABC News reports that the judge’s “name was added to the list well after the classified documents case was thrown out over the summer,” meaning after she delivered Trump his signature legal victory.