Jeffrey Abramson, Eugene R. Fidell, and Dennis Aftergut write:

On Tuesday, Federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon launched the Florida trial for Donald Trump’s national security case on a “rocket docket,” setting the trial date on August 14. That date will likely not hold, but it might reassure those who have worried about her assignment to the case, concerned that she might, among other things, slow-walk it.

That reassurance won’t end the concerns, of course. Legal experts (among others) lost trust in Judge Cannon as a fair-minded jurist in September when, without plausible legal authority, she appointed a special master to review the classified documents the government seized in the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago the previous month. The Eleventh Circuit bluntly corrected her for treating a former president specially. Cannon’s trial date order suggests that she “got the memo” and may have learned a lesson.

Still, there are many ways Judge Cannon could still tilt the process in Trump’s favor, from evidentiary rulings to jury instructions. Atop the list of ways she could tip the scales of justice is in how she conducts jury selection. Her responsibility is to weed out individuals with unshakeable, pre-formed opinions of innocence or guilt. How she does that—or doesn’t, as the case may be—could determine the outcome of the trial. [Continue reading…]