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Trump Trial Date in Documents Case Is Up in the Air for Now
(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge in Florida didn’t immediately set a trial date in the classified documents prosecution against Donald Trump, but expressed skepticism about arguments from both the government and the former president’s lawyers.
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US District Judge Aileen Cannon, in a closely watched pre-trial hearing Tuesday, said she would issue an order after the hearing to address the first fight between prosecutors and Trump in the case. The government wants a trial in December; and the former president’s lawyers don’t want any date set for now.
Setting a schedule for the coming months — a relatively uncontroversial step in a typical trial — has major consequences for the former president as he ramps up his 2024 campaign with his legal risks mounting.
The trial date in Florida is only one of several legal obligations piling up on Trump’s schedule going into the election cycle, which include cases involving his business, allegations of defamation and hush money payments to an adult film star years ago. Trump is also the target of federal and state criminal probes related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 elections.
Cannon signaled some skepticism about the Trump team’s arguments that his 2024 campaign schedule and the publicity and political climate were grounds to delay setting a trial until after the election. She told Trump’s lawyers to focus their push for a longer timeline on the volume of evidence, the complexity of issues related to classified material and the scope of pretrial arguments they want to raise.
That was a “more suitable” framework to guide her scheduling decisions, Cannon said.
But the judge also suggested she had concerns about the government’s proposed December trial date, at one point asking lead prosecutor Jay Bratt if there were any previous cases involving classified information that unfolded “on such a compressed time table?” She said that she had to leave enough time to resolve all motions the defense might raise, even if the government believed the case was straightforward.
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Upcoming legal challenges for Trump include an October trial for his business on New York state fraud allegations, a Jan. 15 trial date on defamation allegations from writer E. Jean Carroll and a March trial date in New York over the hush money allegations during the 2016 campaign.
On Tuesday, Trump announced on social media that he’d received notice from the Justice Department that he is a target in the federal election probe, a sign that charges could be imminent.
The hearing marked Cannon’s first in-person appearance in the case since the June indictment. Appointed to the Florida court by Trump, she presided last year over a fight over evidence seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, granting his request to block the government from using materials until a third-party special master could review them. She was later reversed by an appeals court.
Trial Date Fight
On Tuesday, Cannon remained largely expressionless, only occasionally nodding along to acknowledge points the lawyers made. She urged attorneys to be efficient in their arguments and pointed out when they hadn’t directly answered a question. Trump didn’t attend the hearing, but his co-defendant Waltine “Walt” Nauta was there. Nauta didn’t speak except to greet the judge at the start.
Cannon originally set an Aug. 14 trial date, but Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and defense attorneys agreed that was premature. Prosecutors proposed starting trial on Dec. 11, saying that would allow time to resolve any issues related to the use of classified information.
Trump and Nauta’s attorneys called the plan unrealistic. They argued that the unprecedented legal issues involved, the large amount of evidence, the complexities of dealing with classified material and Trump’s 2024 presidential bid all weighed in favor of waiting to set a trial date.
Read More: Trump Seeks to Delay Documents Trial With Eye to 2024 Election
Trump attorney Chris Kise made clear on Tuesday that the defense didn’t believe they could be ready for trial or that a fair jury could be selected before the November 2024 election, noting the high level of publicity surrounding the case.
Cannon pressed Trump’s lawyers for a more concrete proposal for a timetable, noting that wasn’t in their court papers. Trump attorney Todd Blanche argued for the parties to provide a status update in November after the defense had time to review all of the evidence, and then potentially schedule motions in December. He said that if the court needed to set a trial date, it should consider one in the weeks after the 2024 election.
In asking for the December trial, prosecutors disputed that the case involved novel issues and said that aside from sorting out how to handle classified information, the government’s case presents “straightforward theories of liability.” They strongly objected to Trump’s proposal to indefinitely delay setting a trial.
Blanche said it was “disingenuous” for the government to ask the court to treat Trump the same as other defendants when he’s running for president. He argued it was simply “reality” that Trump’s campaign and the many other legal entanglements he had to address complicated their ability to prepare for trial.
Prosecutor David Harbach said that courts had managed to seat juries for politicians, movie stars and corporate executives in the past, it just required more careful vetting.
“He should be treated like everybody else,” Harbach said.
The prosecutor also pushed back on the idea Trump allies have pushed that the government’s case was governed by politics, portraying it as a fight Trump and his potential rival President Joe Biden. Any suggestion of political influence by the administration was “flat-out false,” Harbach said.
“There has been none,” Harbach said. “None.”
(Updates with additional comments from pre-trial hearing.)
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