U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected a request to recuse herself from the case against a Florida man charged with attempting to kill former President Donald Trump during the summer in one of two reported attempted assassinations.
“I have never spoken to or met former President Trump except in connection with his required presence at an official judicial proceeding, through counsel,” the Trump-appointed judge wrote in a seven-page decision filed Tuesday in Fort Pierce, Fla.
In September in the southern district of Florida’s U.S. District Court, federal prosecutors charged Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, with the attempted assassination of Trump. He pleaded not guilty.
Cannon, 43, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, has ruled favorably for the convicted political leader in past cases.
Lawyers for Routh had requested that Cannon recuse herself given her past pro-Trump judicial rulings. They also argued that Cannon’s alleged past relationship with one of the prosecutors constituted a potential conflict.
Over the summer Cannon dismissed the federal government’s classified documents case against Trump, claiming that the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel supposedly violated, she ruled, the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.
“I will not be guided by highly inaccurate, uninformed, or speculative opinions to the contrary,” Cannon wrote in Tuesday’s filing.
As for words Trump has said about Cannon in the past, “I have no control over what private citizens, members of the media, or public officials or candidates elect to say about me or my judicial rulings,” she wrote.
The former president and current GOP nominee owns the golf club where authorities say a second potential assassination attempt took place. Trump was playing golf when a Secret Service agent said he spotted a weapon nearby and intervened.
Federal prosecutors say Routh “did forcibly assault, oppose, impede, intimidate and interfere with” a Secret Service agent who had discovered Routh hiding among trees overlooking the former president’s private Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
According to prosecutors, the only reason Routh was in West Palm Beach on Sept. 15 and in August was to assassinate Trump.
Routh faces a number of other charges. (UPI)
