The federal judge overseeing the case over former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents officially gave up her own trial start date of May 20 on Tuesday, but refused to set a new date, citing that There is still a lot of work to be done before a jury can hear the charges.
Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s decision to delay the start of the trial was more or less a foregone conclusion, considering how many legal issues remain unresolved less than two weeks after the date she originally set.
In a brief order, Judge Cannon wrote that choosing a new date at this time would be “imprudent and inconsistent with the court’s duty to fully and fairly consider” what she described as “the myriad and interrelated” pretrial issues before her have not yet been submitted.
That included several motions pending from Mr. Trump to dismiss the case and a series of thorny questions about how to decide what types of sensitive information can be disclosed in the trial under a law called the Classified Information Procedures Act.
Mr. Trump is accused in the case of mishandling and illegally storing classified material after it left the White House and of obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to get it back from him. Prosecutors have indicated that some of the materials he kept contained information about military plans and American nuclear capabilities.
Judge Cannon indicated back in November that she was willing to make some “appropriate adjustments” to the timing of the trial. In March, she held a hearing in federal district court in Fort Pierce, Florida, which focused on trial dates.
Although Mr. Trump’s lawyers told her on the eve of that hearing that they could be ready to go to trial in August if necessary, Judge Cannon made no further scheduling decisions until her order on Tuesday.
Deciding when to initiate a trial is important for any judge, but the timing of Mr. Trump’s trial over classified documents — and his other federal case accusing him of trying to overturn the 2020 election — is important more than the usual meaning.
Because if the federal trial is postponed until after the November election and Mr. Trump wins the race, he could order the Justice Department, which he controls, to drop the charges.
As part of her order Tuesday, Judge Cannon, who was placed on the bench by Mr. Trump in the final days of his term, set a series of hearings and filing deadlines extending through the end of July. The timeline she set made it nearly impossible for the case to go before a jury even in August, the time frame Trump’s lawyers had already agreed to.
Throughout the case, Judge Cannon has given Mr. Trump’s legal team a wide berth in its defense, often hearing legal submissions that many federal judges would have rejected out of hand or decided on written submissions alone.
One of the most surprising hearings she added to her newly issued calendar was a two-day trial in late June to decide who should be considered as part of the prosecution team. In January, Mr Trump’s lawyers filed court documents showing that much of the US national security apparatus – including senior intelligence and defense officials – were part of the team.
The purpose of this action by Mr. Trump’s team was to obtain additional discovery information about any contacts these officials may have had with prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith. Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought to strengthen their defense strategy because members of the so-called “deep state” had collaborated in filing the lawsuit against Mr. Trump over classified documents.
Judge Cannon has also scheduled a separate but potentially explosive hearing in late May to consider arguments about whether Mr. Smith initiated what he called a “selective and vindictive prosecution” of Mr. Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta. The hearing is likely to include Mr. Trump’s own allegations of selective prosecution since Mr. Nauta, one of his personal advisers, included them in his own filings.
Echoing one of Mr. Trump’s political arguments, his lawyers have been claiming for months that the special counsel was wrong to indict him, despite findings that other public figures, such as President Biden, were in possession of classified materials, but escaped prosecution. Another important aspect of Judge Cannon’s new schedule was her decision to push back to mid-June the deadline for Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file a critical brief containing a detailed inventory of the classified materials they plan to present at trial.
This inventory is significant because it ultimately sets up a fierce battle between the defense and prosecution over what kind of classified material the jury will hear — a battle that will involve balancing issues of public access and national security It could take months to complete.
The original filing deadline for this inventory was supposed to have been Thursday, but late Monday evening Judge Cannon postponed that date without setting a new one.
Their decision came just after Mr. Trump’s lawyers again requested a postponement of the deadline. They said they needed more time and raised allegations that Mr Smith’s team had failed to preserve the integrity of the boxes of documents at the heart of the case.
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2024-05-07 23:14:52
www.nytimes.com
