Ex-Trump White House Lawyer Excoriates Judge Cannon as ‘Petty, Partisan Prima Donna’ Who Entertains Trump’s ‘Flimsiest Arguments’

Former White House lawyer Ty Cobb ripped U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday after it was reported she rejected calls to recuse herself from Donald Trump’s classified documents case.

Special Counsel Jack Smith alleges that Trump willfully retained classified documents after leaving office and obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them. The former president has pleaded not guilty.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2020, rebuffed recommendations from Southern District of Florida Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga and another judge to step away from the case.

Cannon has made several dubious rulings and has been rebuked by the ultra-conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Legal experts have criticized Cannon, whom they accuse of slow-walking the case to prevent it from going to trial before the election. Indeed, she has indefinitely postponed the trial date.

Cobb, who worked in Trump’s White House, has long insisted that rather than simply being incompetent, as some analysts have maintained, Cannon is deliberately throwing a wrench into the case to help the former president. Her decision to hold hearings on the legality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel has given her critics yet more ammunition on this front.

“This all comes down to a request by Trump’s team,” Erin Burnett told Cobb on Thursday’s OutFront on CNN. “They wanna get Jack Smith fired, get rid of him as special counsel, say it’s invalid in the Mar-a-Lago case. So, what’s really at stake here?”

“Nothing, really, since the law requires that she validate Jack Smith’s appointment and not disqualify him,” Cobb replied. “The jurisprudence on this goes back to 1988 when the Independent Counsel statute, which preceded special counsel appointments when the Independent Counsel statute was fully vetted in the Supreme Court and upheld.”

Cobb then criticized Cannon’s decision to hold a hearing on Smith’s appointment, calling it “silly.”

“The fact she doesn’t deny most of these motions without a hearing is silly,” he added. “The fact that Trump can get a hearing on the flimsiest arguments is shocking.”

He stated that if Cannon actually rules in Trump’s favor by declaring Smith’s appointment illegal, that would not bode well for her.

“The worst thing that could happen to her is that she actually does rule for Trump on this because that would go to the 11th Circuit and then I think this petty, partisan prima donna would be put in her place and they would remove her.”

Cobb has arguably been Cannon’s harshest and most consistent critic. Last month he said the judge “is not capable of ruling intelligently” and has previously predicted that Cannon would overstep and ultimately be removed from the case by the circuit court.

Watch above via CNN.