Aileen Mercedes Cannon (born 1981) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She was appointed in 2020 by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the United States Senate. Cannon previously worked for the corporate law firm Gibson Dunn from 2009 to 2012 and was a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida from 2013 to 2020.
In 2022, Cannon presided over the case of Donald J. Trump v. United States of America. She ordered the U.S. government to pause using materials seized from Trump's private club and residence in its investigation and granted Trump's request for a special master to review the material. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed and rebuked Cannon after it found she had wrongly exercised jurisdiction over the case. Cannon then dismissed Trump's lawsuit per orders from the Eleventh Circuit.
Following Trump's indictment in June 2023, Cannon oversaw a federal criminal case against Trump. Many legal experts, citing her handling of the civil case against Trump, called for her recusal from the case. Under Cannon, the case was considerably delayed from getting to trial, with Cannon granting multiple requests by Trump to extend pre-trial motions. In July 2024, she dismissed the case entirely, ruling that special counsel Jack Smith's appointment was unconstitutional. The ruling was appealed, but the appeal was dropped after Trump became president.
Cannon's rulings have received considerable media attention, with many legal experts criticizing her decisions and alleging bias over her handling of Trump's legal cases.
Early life and education Cannon was born in 1981 in Cali, Colombia. She has an elder sister. Her mother had fled Cuba as a girl after the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, and her father is from Indiana. Cannon grew up in Miami, Florida, where she attended Ransom Everglades School, a private school.
Cannon graduated from Duke University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts. In college, she studied for a semester in Spain and wrote for Miami's Spanish language newspaper El Nuevo Herald; her writings included topics such as flamenco dancing, festivals, and yoga. Cannon then attended the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an articles editor for the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform and was a quarter-finalist in the school's moot court competition. She graduated in 2007 with a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, along with membership in the Order of the Coif.
Cannon has been a member of the conservative and libertarian Federalist Society since 2005, when she was a law student. While being considered for the position of a district judge in 2020, Cannon explained that she joined the Federalist Society because of a "diversity of viewpoints" and also because she "found interesting the organization's discussions about the constitutional separation of powers, the rule of law, and the limited role of the judiciary to say what the law is—not to make the law".
Career From 2008 to 2009, Cannon served as a law clerk for Judge Steven Colloton of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Iowa. From 2009 to 2012, she was an associate at the Washington, D.C., office of the corporate law firm Gibson Dunn. In one case in 2011, Cannon defended the former leader of the fixed income desk of Thomas Weisel Partners, before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority; the former leader was cleared of fraud in the case.
From 2013 to 2020, Cannon was an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida. As a federal prosecutor, Cannon worked in the major crimes division, which included working on drug, firearm, and immigration cases, then moved to the appellate division, working on convictions and sentencings. In 2018, Cannon was part of the prosecution that won an appellate case involving Mutual Benefits Corporation's former lawyer Anthony Livoti Jr., reaffirming his 10-year sentence for fraud related to insurance investment. In 2019, Cannon was part of the prosecution that won an appellate case involving Scott W. Rothstein, which allowed prosecutors to withdraw support for reducing his 50-year sentence for a Ponzi scheme. As a prosecutor, Cannon helped secure convictions for 41 defendants, of which four convictions were from jury trials.
Cannon has participated in at least three events funded by George Mason University, a conservative law school, which she did not disclose as required. These included legal colloquia at Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana in 2021 and 2022 and a banquet in 2023.
Federal judicial service
In June 2019, the office of Senator Marco Rubio indicated to Cannon that he was considering her for the United States district judge position. Cannon expressed interest that month and subsequently was interviewed by representatives for Senator Rubio and Senator Rick Scott, as well as White House and Justice Department legal officials.
On May 21, 2020, at age 39, Cannon was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She was nominated to the seat left vacant by Judge Kenneth Marra, who assumed senior status on August 1, 2017. The American Bar Association rated Cannon as "Qualified" for the position. The American Bar Association required at least 12 years of law practice as one of their approval criteria, and Cannon met that standard. While being vetted by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Cannon described her judicial philosophy as originalist and textualist.
On July 29, 2020, a hearing was held before the United States Judiciary Committee. Law360 reported that Cannon "avoided scrutiny" during her July 2020 Senate confirmation hearing as the senators "took it easy" on her. The hearing featured five judicial nominees, with Republican senators focused on questioning J. Philip Calabrese and Democratic senators focused on questioning Toby Crouse. Afterward, Democratic senators sent Cannon many follow-up questions to answer.
On September 17, 2020, her nomination was reported out of committee by a 16–6 vote. On November 12, 2020, the United States Senate invoked cloture on her nomination by a 57–21 vote. Later that day, Cannon was confirmed by a 56–21 vote. She received her commission on November 13, 2020.
In May 2024, NPR reported that Cannon had violated internal judiciary rules and federal ethics law when she did not timely disclose that in 2021 and 2022, she was privately reimbursed when attending two legal seminars ("Sage Lodge Colloquium") at a luxury resort in Montana organized by George Mason University, and only disclosed it when NPR enquired about the matter; Cannon's court clerk responded by blaming the missing information on "inadvertent" technical issues. Cannon was reimbursed by the university's Antonin Scalia Law School, which has been described by The New York Times as an intended paragon of "conservative legal scholarship and influence".
According to ABC News, Cannon's name was on a list of possible candidates for United States Attorney General if Donald Trump was victorious in the 2024 presidential election. She is a possible contender for nomination to the United States Supreme Court if a vacancy on the Court occurs during the second presidency of Donald Trump.
Notable cases
It was reported in June 2021 that Cannon ordered Swiss cement company LafargeHolcim to reach a settlement to compensate an American family under the Helms-Burton Act for using the family's property in Cuba, which had been seized by the Cuban government in 1960. Before Cannon's order, no one had managed to secure compensation under the Helms-Burton Act for business property confiscated in Cuba.
In the case of Christopher Tavorris Wilkins, a 34-year-old man from Palm Beach Gardens who, in court, threw a chair at and threatened to kill a federal prosecutor, Cannon in April 2022 added six and a half years of imprisonment to his existing 17.5 year sentence for gun charges.
In the case of Paul Vernon Hoeffer, a 60-year-old man from Palm Beach Gardens who pleaded guilty to making death threats against three Democrats: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and prosecutor Kim Foxx, with federal sentencing guidelines recommending 33 and 41 months in prison, and prosecutors proposing 41 months, Cannon in April 2022 sentenced Hoeffer to only 18 months in prison and then three years of supervised release, and also fined him just $2,000.
In the case of Juan Antonio Garcia, a 31-year-old former Sewall's Point police officer, Cannon in July 2022 sentenced him to 25 years in federal prison, a further 20 years of supervision, and a $10,000 fine for soliciting sex from a teenage boy. Sentencing guidelines imposed a range of between 15 years in prison to a life sentence, while federal prosecutors requested over 30 years imprisonment.
In the ongoing 18 month-long case of United States v. Carver, Cannon has presided over a complex, multi-defendant health care fraud case in which she has had to rule on issues of attorney-client privilege, defense attempts to suppress evidence or have charges dismissed, and motions to limit the scope of witness testimony. She has generally ruled in the prosecution's favor in each of these matters.
In a 2023 federal trial of an Alabama man accused of running a child pornography website, Cannon closed the jury selection to the public on the basis of space restrictions and also failed to swear in the jury. This was described as "a fundamental constitutional error" by legal experts. According to court transcripts from June 12, 2023, Cannon was repeatedly asked by both prosecutors and the defense attorney to open the courtroom. The public defense attorney objected to closing the courtroom, arguing that doing so violates the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which Cannon overruled. She was forced to restart the jury selection process before the trial ended in a plea bargain without the jury deliberating. The courtroom in which this took place is the same one in which the 2024 criminal trial United States v. Trump was set to take place, which prompted concern from one legal scholar about how Cannon would handle space restrictions.
Cannon presided over the trial of Ryan Wesley Routh, a North Carolina man who attempted to assassinate Trump in West Palm Beach. She sentenced Routh to life imprisonment on February 4, 2026.
Trump v. United States, civil case
Cannon heard the case of Trump v. United States (2022), which began on August 22, 2022, when former US president Donald Trump asked the court to appoint a special master to review materials seized during the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago earlier that month. On August 27, before hearing argument from the Justice Department, Cannon declared her "preliminary intent" to appoint a special master. Two days later, the Justice Department told Cannon it had already completed its review of materials that could have fallen under attorney–client privilege.
On September 5, 2022, Cannon granted Trump's request for a special master to review the seized materials for attorney-client privilege and executive privilege and ordered the Justice Department to stop using the seized material in its investigation until the special master's review was complete or until a further court order. In her ruling, Cannon cited exceptional "stigma associated with the subject seizure", since Trump was a former president, as well as the potential for great "reputational harm" from any future indictment based on "property that ought to be returned".