Charlie Savage writes:

The U.S. attorney in Miami, who is running a sprawling investigation into former officials who investigated President Trump, has been granted an unusual request to convene an extra grand jury at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla. The location ensures that just one judge can oversee it: Aileen M. Cannon.

That raises a question with intriguing political and legal overtones. Could Judge Cannon again end up as a key player in a Trump-centric case, this one centered not on accusations of wrongdoing by him but on whether the Russia investigation and the charges against him after he left office in 2021 amount to a conspiracy against him?

Judge Cannon, whom Mr. Trump nominated in the final year of his first term, handled the case involving his retention of classified documents while out of office. She temporarily disrupted the inquiry after the F.B.I. in 2022 searched Mr. Trump’s club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, before an appeals court reversed her decision. In July 2024, she dismissed his indictment on procedural grounds, a decision that flew in the face of previous court decisions.

The U.S. attorney, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, a Trump loyalist, has already been using a grand jury in Miami to subpoena former officials involved in an intelligence assessment that concluded Russia was trying to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election. He has not said why he is putting an extra grand jury 130 miles away in Judge Cannon’s courthouse.

But Mike Davis, a conservative legal activist and lawyer who is close to Mr. Reding Quiñones, has suggested that the purpose is to ensure that Judge Cannon will have a hand in any legal issues about the inquiry.

If that is the case, it would put Judge Cannon in charge of disputes like requests by recipients of subpoenas to quash them, on grounds ranging from an expired statute of limitations to claims of privilege, or requests by prosecutors to compel such witnesses to testify under threat of being jailed for contempt of court. [Continue reading…]