Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon is all but signalling a significant delay in the Mar-a-Lago documents case against Trump himself, and I wouldn't expect this trial to begin -- if it begins at all -- until after the November 2024 election.
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s indictment for allegedly mishandling national security secrets suggested Wednesday that she might push back the planned trial timeline, as courts wrestle with the growing complexity of juggling four separate criminal cases and an ongoing civil trial against the former president.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon listened to prosecutors argue at a hearing for keeping the schedule she set earlier this year, which includes a trial in May 2024. Lawyers for the former president insisted they needed more time to prepare.
“I’m having a hard time seeing how this work can be accomplished in this compressed time frame,” Cannon said at one point, focusing in particular on a federal trial scheduled to begin March 4 in Washington in which Trump is accused of conspiring to obstruct the results of the 2020 election.
Wednesday’s debate largely centered on looming deadlines for Trump’s lawyers to file pretrial motions in the Florida case. But pushing back that time frame could have a domino effect of delaying the entire trial schedule.
Prosecutor Jay Bratt argued that whatever the deadlines may be in other cases, those could all change, so it did not make sense to alter the trial date in the Florida case. Cannon sounded skeptical.
“I’m not quite seeing in your position an understanding of these realities,” Cannon told Bratt. The judge said she would rule on the schedule “as soon as possible.”
The hearing highlighted the complexities of a case that centers on highly classified documents, involving a defendant who has multiple competing court dates up and down the East Coast — even as he again runs for president.
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche spent close to an hour telling the judge how “voluminous” the evidence in the classified documents case is, and emphasizing that he and Trump’s other lawyers need more time to review it. He also noted that the D.C. indictment — also brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith — came after Trump was first charged in the classified-documents case. The Florida trial date was set by Cannon before Trump was indicted in Washington.
“Everything has changed” since Cannon first set the trial date, Blanche told the judge. “There is not a single part of your honor’s schedule that is not adversely affected by the D.C. case.”
Trump is charged in Florida with dozens of counts of mishandling classified information and plotting with two aides to obstruct government efforts to recover hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach home and private club, after his presidency ended. He has pleaded not guilty.
Expect the trial to be pushed back until early 2025 at the soonest, which of course was the timeframe that Trump's lawyers asked for initially, that they would need two years to go over the evidence. It was ridiculously obvious then that the lawyers expected Cannon to deliver on a scenario where a victorious Trump would be able to order the case dismissed after the November 2024 election, and it's even more obvious now just how corrupt Judge Cannon is.
Luckily for America, the other criminal proceedings against Trump are continuing apace.
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