Cannon, a Trump appointee confirmed to the bench in late 2020, has far less experience than the DC court handling cases where high-stakes political implications intersect with national security interests.
For instance, Boasberg previously served as the chief judge on another powerful judicial bench that works almost solely in the national security space, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The court looks at surveillance warrants related to national security intelligence matters, and it handles extensive classified issues from its base out of Washington.
And Howell, also an Obama appointee, is one of the most seasoned judges in the country on the sort of attorney-client privilege disputes that occurred during the Trump grand jury investigations, with more public opinions on the topic in politically charged investigations than perhaps any other judge in the country.
Cannon, conversely, has presided over only four criminal trials since Trump appointed her to the bench in 2020, in a courthouse so sleepy it didn’t have a secured facility to look at classified records until months after Trump’s case landed on her docket last June. She is taking months to work through classified records issues in the case, and hasn’t even scheduled hearings on a major set of disputes to come over the national security records the defense lawyers may want to use at trial.
“Simply greater exposure to this litigation process alone speaks to the speed and detail with which these two DC judges handled these matters in comparison to Judge Cannon,” Moss said.