Tonight, sources tell ABC news. The federal judge, who dismissed the criminal case against Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, is now under consideration for the role of attorney general. If Trump wins back the white House. [00:00:15] The sources tell us that Judge Aileen Cannon is now on a list of several possible candidates for the job. It's a list circulating within the Trump campaign and transition operation. Not good. Sounds bad. [00:00:31] It's my expert commentary. This is not this seems like a little bit of a quid pro quo type situation, if you ask me, John, and I'll explain why. If you're unfamiliar with Judge Aileen Cannon, Trump actually nominated her to the federal bench in 2020, despite her lack of experience. [00:00:49] And look, just because she was picked by Donald Trump to serve as a federal judge doesn't necessarily mean it would be terrible for him to pick her as AG, but the way that she has handled the classified documents case and the lack of experience she had in the first place to be nominated as a federal judge, [00:01:09] you start getting the sense that favor for a favor type situations are happening. If he does in fact choose her as attorney general and if he wins the election, of course. So in her seven years as a Justice Department attorney, cannon participated on the trial teams of just four criminal cases and on the bench. [00:01:29] She's only presided over a handful of criminal trials, which is a lack of experience is a little bit concerning. When she was the judge overseeing the classified documents criminal case right now, she was picked to oversee the criminal case, accusing Donald Trump [00:01:45] of mishandling those classified documents. And if you guys can recall, Trump had multiple opportunities to just return the documents to the National Archives. They hit the homie up. They're like, yo, we know you have the documents. Please give us the documents. Just give us the documents you have classified and top secret documents. [00:02:04] We just want them back. And he just refused to do it. And his lawyers, like, lied at one point to the feds about it. And eventually there was an FBI raid. And through the FBI raid, we found that there were classified documents strewn about Mar-A-Lago, which is concerning considering the fact that if you've got the money [00:02:22] to pay for a Mar-A-Lago membership, you can just be there in the same place as these top secret classified documents. So when I say top secret, I'm talking about documents that can only be viewed in a very specific, secure room. And Trump just had them at Mar-A-Lago and I. Was it a secure bathroom [00:02:42] because those exist? No. Isn't there supposed to be like a secure closet for French onion eating, French onion soup, eating habits and stuff like that? - Like lots of secure. - Rooms, a water closet, yes. Right, right. So you guys get the picture. Like, I think that the two criminal cases that Trump really should have faced [00:03:03] consequences for classified documents and, of course, the fake electors scheme to overturn the 2020 election. Now, with that in mind, cannon is now allegedly on a short list for Attorney general. Here are some more details, including Trump's response to this reporting. [00:03:22] Her name appears on a document reviewed by ABC news titled Transition Planning Legal Principles, which lists potential candidates for white House Counsel's office, the Justice Department and the FBI if Trump wins. Sources tell us the document was drafted by top Trump advisers, including Boris [00:03:40] Epstein, who oversees Trump's legal team and is one of his closest aides. The Trump campaign had no immediate comment to our reporting about Judge Cannon, but I spoke to Donald Trump late yesterday, and he said that he wasn't ready to talk about the work of his [00:03:56] transition team or any of the appointments he might make if he gets back to the white House telling me, quote, I don't like to talk about transition until I win. Convenient answer really. Now, Cannon's name appears second after former SEC chair Jay Clayton. [00:04:16] That's according to the document, which includes nearly a dozen potential candidates for attorney general. Cannon's name was added to the list well after the classified documents case was thrown out over the summer. The sources said, so she did throw out the classified documents case. [00:04:32] He's not going to face charges for that. And so you, John, you know, the other thing to keep in mind is Trump does talk about retaliation against his political opponents. He feels that he has been the victim of lawfare. [00:04:49] And he talks about prosecuting and going after his political opponents. If she does end up being chosen as the attorney general in his cabinet, should he win this election. You know, she's kind of proven herself to be a bit of a Trump loyalist. [00:05:04] I don't think that she made the right decision in throwing out the case. There's like a mountain of evidence that he mishandled classified documents. And that's a serious offense. You don't want future presidents doing that. Right. You want to show that there's a consequence for doing it. But are you at all concerned that should Trump win this election [00:05:20] and name her as his attorney general, that she will carry out his wishes in prosecuting his political opponents? That we don't have much evidence that would lead us to believe anything other than that. I think that her being selected would be explicitly corrupt. [00:05:37] I mean, the point of doing it, it's not even just. She'll do what I want. It's to tell everyone. I reward people who make my legal challenges for the crimes that I committed in plain view. Go away. Like, this is the system we have now. [00:05:52] You can. I can do whatever I want if you play ball. And if you play ball, you'll be rewarded. That's like. So the purpose of choosing her. I think the silver lining to her being chosen is that to the extent that her tenure as a judge, brief as it is, is known for anything, [00:06:08] it's being utterly incompetent, making constant mistakes that the levels of the judiciary are above her have to reverse because she doesn't seem to understand the constitution or procedure. She takes literally forever to do anything. Now, sometimes that's purposeful. It's to slow roll the investigation. [00:06:26] But also like if there's a conservative watching this and you're thinking, well, you guys are, it's just a coincidence he didn't choose her because of that. First of all, how would you feel if Joe Biden did this exact same thing? But also she is a a district court judge. And I had to look up because I couldn't remember how many district court judges [00:06:44] there are in America. So I'm like, what is she like? Okay, they chose her. Let's say it's at random. Is that like 1 in 12? It just it could be there are 678. And they chose judge a person with basically no experience, no notable cases other than the one that she made disappear, [00:07:01] disappear at the behest of Donald Trump. This is as corrupt as he could make this decision making process. And he really loves her, especially after how she handled the classified documents case. She loves to praise her. And here's a little taste of what I'm talking about. [00:07:17] I'm very proud to have appointed her, but she's very smart and very strong and loves our country. I mean, loves our country. We need judges that love our country so they do the right thing. I think she's a brilliant woman. I think she handled a scam. [00:07:34] - It's a scam case. - It wasn't a scam case. You were raided by the FBI because you just wouldn't hand over the documents like he's his own worst enemy, right? Like, look, in the end, it worked out for him because a judge that he nominated, ended up overseeing the case and sided with him. [00:07:53] But it's just. Look, it's frustrating Because what are we supposed to do when a former president does commit a crime? Right. When a former president does mishandle classified documents and top secret documents. And I want to be clear, Biden also did that, [00:08:10] but didn't do it on purpose, realized it, and immediately notified the federal government about it and handed over the documents that he had in his possession. So if Trump, by the way, if Trump had done that, I wouldn't even like I wouldn't even care. Like, who cares? [00:08:25] Because I don't know what the process is like. Obviously, the former president isn't the one who's like, packing boxes as he's like leaving the white House. So maybe staffers made some mistakes, right? But that's not what happened with Trump. Trump had multiple opportunities to hand the documents over, [00:08:41] and he would not do it. So what? No consequences for that. - It's just no. - Consequences. It's an I find it to be an injustice in this particular case. But what I'm even more concerned about, John, is the message that it sends to [00:08:58] future presidents, because if consequences for bad actions serve as a deterrent, and if there's no deterrent, what's going to stop a future president from being like, I like I like these classified documents. I might be able to use them in some way or take them home. [00:09:15] Yeah. I mean. It's a great question. We already know, like we can point to for the past couple of presidents, things that they've done that we believe are clear crimes. Yeah. Like there's tons of crimes that are informally categorized as enough about the thing that a president does that there's nothing you can do about it. [00:09:34] So if a president decides to like, drone strike a US citizen in a foreign country, well, I guess it's kind of a war that we have no chance whatsoever of getting any consequences for that. Donald Trump decides those sorts of crimes are not enough. The the the petty corruption wherein he makes millions off of foreign governments [00:09:51] as he's president, all that stuff. That's not enough. He needs to do personal level crimes that are only to his own benefit. There's nothing policy related. There's nothing to America's interest. He just wants to commit a crime. And now there's there's no deterrent whatsoever against those. [00:10:07] And in fact, if you get rid of the trial for him, you can get a new position. Like imagine if imagine if Harris put Juan Merchan on the Supreme Court after this or Chuck. I mean, I'm not even saying that they did anything corrupt, but just the appearance of it. [00:10:23] They would never do it. And Donald Trump is doing the exact opposite, because we do not have under a person like Trump, we don't have the rule of law. We have the rule of one man and how he wants the law to be interpreted by his toadies at various levels of the government. [00:10:38] Yeah. And by the way, I just wanted to just go back to the video we showed of Trump's statements and also note that, look, it's not even clear what the end result of this case will be because, you know, special counsel Jack Smith has appealed the decision [00:10:55] by Aileen Cannon to throw it out. Smith could decide to use the information to try to get cannon disqualified from the case if an appeals court overturned her ruling dismissing the case. I. Look, I. This whole situation has given me less faith, [00:11:12] even less faith in our justice system as it pertains to powerful people. So I'm not setting my heart on consequences for Trump on this issue ever. But we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll be surprised. According to ABC. [00:11:27] Others under consideration include those who have publicly urged the former president, to do away with the long standing norms of independence between the white House and the nation's law enforcement agencies. That includes Jeffrey Jeffrey Clark, who pleaded not guilty after being indicted [00:11:45] in Georgia for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Mike Davis, who has promoted plans to target Trump's political opponents, imprisoned members of the media in gulags and put migrant children in cages. And Mark Paoletta, who is a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas, [00:12:05] who also represented Thomas's wife Ginni during the House Select Committee's investigation into January 6th. So even if it's not Aileen Cannon, the others on the list are not going to make people happy. People who would want less corruption [00:12:21] and less, you know, scary figures, you know, leading the executive branch's law enforcement agency, you know, the A.G.. So we'll see what happens. This is not good news. And if the Trump campaign wants to quell any concerns that he is [00:12:39] going to be a tyrant, this ain't it. This really ain't it. If you enjoyed this video, that's because of our members. They make us independent. They make us strong and they make us honest. Become a member today by hitting the join button below.