Trump’s Cannon shot

By BRUCE LOWITT

Former president and professional defendant Donald Trump, in his never-ending search for new lawyers to replace those who have quit or been fired by him, has hired now-former U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he persuaded with a five-million-dollar check to resign from the bench Thursday and head his legal team.

The 43-year-old judge has been criticized for seeming to side with Trump in his classified documents case. “I just want to make sure she’ll always see our side of things,” Trump said, “and because last year she made $232,600 a year as a judge, I figured five million ought to set her up for another 22 years until she’s ready to retire.”

Cannon said she decided to, as she put it, “make it official” and accepted the offer from Trump, who appointed her to the bench in 2020, “because, let’s face it, I’ve basically been working for him for the past 16 months and figured it was time I got paid for it. Plus, who am I kidding? I was so not qualified to be a federal judge.”

In addition, Cannon said, she received assurances from Trump that when she isn’t working directly for him she can assist some of his co-defendants and other associates with their defenses “as long as they’re paying me out of their own pockets instead of hitting him up for help.”

“He said he’s had enough of them,” Cannon said, “although he didn’t mention anyone by name – except for Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows and John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark and David Shafer and Cathleen Latham and Shawn Still and Harrison Floyd and … jeez, there are so many. I mean, you don’t expect me to remember all of them, do you?”

Trump owes E. Jean Carroll $88.3-million resulting from verdicts in sexual assault and defamation trials and could owe more than $370-million in the civil suit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James in which he already has been found guilty of fraud and illegality in business dealings.

But Trump said the $5-million for Cannon “was a drop in the bucket and, besides, my MAGA fans just keep filling it. All I have to do is say ‘witch hunt’ or ‘rigged’ or ‘southern border’ and the cash just flows in.”

President Joe Biden said he will shortly nominate someone more qualified than Cannon to replace her on the bench and is said to be deciding between a bag of rocks and a lava lamp.