Judge Aileen Cannon was pressured to step away from former President Donald Trump's classified documents case.

The New York Times published a report on Thursday claiming as much.

Cannon, as we know, did not and has not stepped aside. Rather, she continues to oversee the classified documents case that special counsel Jack Smith has brought against Trump.

Smith claims that Trump illegally mishandled classified documents when he left the White House and that the former president obstructed government efforts to get the documents back. Trump denies this and maintains that Smith is running election interference for President Joe Biden.

The details

According to the Times' report, it was actually two of Cannon's senior colleagues who pressured her to step aside from the Trump case.

The outlet reports:

Shortly after Judge Aileen M. Cannon drew the assignment in June 2023 to oversee former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case, two more experienced colleagues on the federal bench in Florida urged her to pass it up and hand it off to another jurist, according to two people briefed on the conversations.

The Times only identifies one of the judges: Cecilia M. Altonaga, the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida.

The Times goes on to report that Cannon refused to give in to the pressure applied by her colleagues. "Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, wanted to keep the case and refused the judges’ entreaties," the outlet reports.

The rest of the Times' report is, more or less, a hit piece on Cannon

It's no surprise

The fact that Cannon was pressured to remove herself from the Trump case will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the various prosecutions of Trump.

Cannon has faced significant criticism from the political left for every little decision that she has made in the case. The overall claim, from Democrats, is that Cannon has essentially been showing favoritism to Trump and his legal team.

Suffice it to say that not everyone sees things this way.

Many, including legal experts, say that Cannon has, for the most part, been calling things down the middle, which has given the appearance that she is favoring Trump because, in every other Trump prosecution, the judges have essentially ruled against Trump at every turn.

Whatever the case may be, the way she has held up to the pressure from the left says a lot about Cannon.