Trump attends hearing on access to classified documents

Former President Donald J. Trump and his lawyers spent about five hours Monday in a secure room at the Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida, for a hearing to explain their defense strategy to the judge overseeing the case in which the Mr Trump is accused of illegally withholding classified documents after leaving office.

The purpose of the closed hearing was to give Mr. Trump's team a chance to convince Judge Aileen M. Cannon that they should have access to highly classified materials that federal prosecutors have cited as potential evidence. The team of prosecutors led by Jack Smith, the special counsel in charge of the federal investigation into Mr. Trump, has argued that the material in question is not relevant or useful to the former president's defense.

It was the first time Trump and Judge Cannon met in the courthouse. Mr. Trump appointed Judge Cannon to the court in 2020.

While proceedings at the courthouse were closed to the public, dozens of Mr. Trump's supporters waited outside behind barricades on a cordoned-off street to watch his motorcade come and go. Music blared and supporters held signs that read “Florida is Trump country” and waved flags that read “The Donfather 2024.” The St. Lucie County Republican Party had informed local members on Sunday that Trump would be at the Fort Pierce courthouse the next day.

Mr. Trump, who typically likes to use these court hearings as campaign stops, did not stop to talk to his supporters as his motorcade left.

Highly classified material that prosecutors don't want to share with a suspect in national security cases typically involves intelligence-gathering sources and methods, said David Aaron, a former federal national security prosecutor. These are details that prosecutors say have little bearing on the evidence used against the suspect at trial, he said.

However, Mr. Trump and his team are trying to access the material.

The federal courts have a system, known as the Classified Information Procedures Act, for reviewing classified material that is part of a case without publicly disclosing the content of the material.

Mr Smith's team submitted a plea to Judge Cannon on January 31 as to why the material did not have to be shared with the defence.

“Now the court has the opportunity to meet with the defense without the prosecution so that the court can fully understand what type of information would be relevant and useful,” Mr Aaron said. “Those meetings can be iterative and the judge can go back and forth.”

The prosecutor met again with Judge Cannon on Monday afternoon after meeting with Mr Trump and his team. Judge Cannon plans to meet Tuesday morning with attorneys for Trump's co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. And then she will meet with lawyers from the special counsel's team.

In addition to the classified material under discussion, the special counsel has turned over more than 1.28 million pages of unclassified documents and 11,000 pages of classified documents to Mr. Trump's team. These included the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's club and residence in Palm Beach, Florida, and documents and audio recordings related to secret witness interviews.

The trial over the classified documents was initially scheduled for May, but is unlikely to begin until after the November elections. The prosecutor has accused Mr Trump and his team of delaying the trial as much as possible.

Mr. Trump faces criminal charges in three other cases.