Donald Trump's lawyers want to delay his federal documents trial indefinitely, claiming that a trial date can't be set until all of the legal motions surrounding the case have been decided by Trump Judge Aileen Cannon.
The written filing — submitted 30 minutes before its deadline of midnight on Tuesday — presents a significant early test for Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist who is overseeing the case. If granted, it could have the effect of pushing Mr. Trump’s trial into the final stages of the presidential campaign in which he is now the Republican front-runner or even past the 2024 election.
While timing is important in any criminal matter, it could be hugely consequential in Mr. Trump’s case, in which he stands accused of illegally holding on to 31 classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to reclaim them.
There could be complications of a sort never before presented to a court if Mr. Trump is a candidate in the last legs of a presidential campaign and a federal criminal defendant on trial at the same time. If the trial is pushed back until after the election and Mr. Trump wins, he could try to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely.
Some of the former president’s advisers have been blunt in private conversations that he is looking to winning the election as a solution to his legal problems. And the request for an open-ended delay to the trial of Mr. Trump and his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, a personal aide, presents a high-stakes question for Judge Cannon, who came into the case already under scrutiny for making decisions favorable to the former president in the early phases of the investigation.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers pitched their request to Judge Cannon as a plea for cautious deliberation and as a means of safeguarding democracy.
“This extraordinary case presents a serious challenge to both the fact and perception of our American democracy,” wrote the lawyers, Chris M. Kise and Todd Blanche for Mr. Trump, and Stanley Woodward Jr. and Sasha Dadan for Mr. Nauta.
“The court now presides over a prosecution advanced by the administration of a sitting president against his chief political rival, himself a leading candidate for the presidency of the United States,” they wrote. “Therefore, a measured consideration and timeline that allows for a careful and complete review of the procedures that led to this indictment and the unprecedented legal issues presented herein best serves the interests of the defendants and the public.”
The lawyers also took note of the unusual intertwining of law and politics in the case, suggesting that Mr. Trump’s status as a presidential candidate should be factored into the timing of the trial.
“President Trump is running for president of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee,” they wrote. “This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on Nov. 5, 2024.”
“Mr. Nauta’s job requires him to accompany President Trump during most campaign trips around the country,” they continued. “This schedule makes trial preparation with both of the defendants challenging. Such preparation requires significant planning and time.”
The question isn't whether the motion is bullshit (it is) but whether Judge Cannon will grant it. Trump having the trial pushed back to after the 2024 election means if he wins the election he can dispose of the case, or more likely order the interim Attorney General he has after firing Merrick Garland drop the case as Trump would then be president. If he doesn't win, and Cannon still has the case, Trump will just file for 2028 and demand another delay, and get it.
We're about to find out whether this case goes to trial at all, and that's solely up to a judge that has already ruled that the government completely overstepped its bounds in obtaining evidence in the case in the first place.
Judge Cannon has the means here to effectively eliminate this case. We'll see if she does. Remember, she's tried to before. And I don't think being smacked down by the 11th Circuit previously will matter to her all that much, and there's not a lot the 11th Circuit can do here to interfere without blowing up the case and delaying it further.
It's literally in her court now.
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