Federal judge shoots down 'orchestrated campaign' to remove Trump-appointed judge in classified documents case

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60. You miss the point. The rule is intended to save the court from having to process and consider duplicative complaints.

To the extent there are complaints that raise substantially similar claims but are not part of the orchestrated complaint, the court has indicated it is considering those complaints and has rejected them because they are at odds with the rules stating that complaints based on the substance of a judge's rulings, including complaints about delay in a single case, are not merits based grounds for finding judicial misconduct. The remedy for merits based challenges are for the other party to bring an appeal.

https://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/courtdocs/clk/GeneralOrder2024-J.pdfHere are the relevant portions of the ruling:

"Many of the complaints against Judge Cannon request that the Chief Circuit Judge remove her from the classified-documents case and reassign the case to a different judge. But neither the Chief Circuit Judge nor the Judicial Council has the authority to take this action under the Rules for Judicial-Condu ct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings. See Judicial-Conduct Rule 11 (Chief Judge’s Review); Judicial-Conduct Rule 19 (Judicial-Council Disposition of Petition for Review); Judicial-Conduct Rule 20 (Judicial-Council Action Following Appointment of Special Committee).Many of the complaints against Judge Cannon also question the correctness of her rulings or her delays in issuing rulings in the case. But judicial-Conduct Rule 4(b)(1) provides that "[cjognizable misconduct does not include an allegation that calls into question the correctness of a judge’sruling, including a failure to recuse.” And judicial Conduct Rule 4(b)(2) provides that cognizable misconduct does not include allegation about delay in rendering a decision or ruling, unless the allegation concerns an improper motive in delaying a particular decision or habitual delay in a significant number of unrelated cases.” The “Commentary on Rule 4” states that “a complaint of delay in a single case is excluded as merits-related.” Although many of the complaints allege an improper motive in delaying the case, the allegations are speculative and unsupported by any evidence. The Complaints also do not establish that Judge Cannon was required to recuse herself from the case because she was appointed by then- President Trump. See Straw v. United States, 4 F.4th 1358, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2021) (“There is no support whatsoever for the contention that a Judge can be disqualified based simply on the identity of the President who appointed him.”)."

"Orchestrated Complaints. When many essentially identical complaints from different complainants are received and appear to be part of an orchestrated campaign, the chiefJudge may recommend that theJudicial council issue a written order instructing the circuit clerk to accept only a certain number of such complaints for filing and to refuse to accept additional complaints....Because the orchestrated complaints received on and after May 16 raise allegations that have been or will be considered in previously filed complaints against Judge Cannon for filing nd processing would not provide any benefit to the adjudication of the merits of the allegations against Judge Cannon.