Judge hints at postponement of trial against Trump documents

The federal judge who oversaw the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of mishandling classified documents signaled Wednesday that she was inclined to make some “reasonable adjustments” to the timing of the case, expressing concern that it could “clash” with Mr. Trump’s case. other federal process.

At a hearing in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, did not specify how she planned to change the schedule of the documents case and said she would soon issue a written order detailing the details.

But she seemed skeptical that the trial date in the documents case – now set for May 20 – could easily co-exist with Mr Trump’s trial in Washington on charges of conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election, which is set to begin in early March , to undo.

“I find it difficult to see, realistically, how this work can be accomplished in this short period of time,” Judge Cannon said.

She was responding to the latest request from Mr. Trump’s lawyers to delay the proceedings, part of a pattern in which they have tried to delay his trial dates as far as possible. Trump has made no secret of his hope to delay a legal reckoning until after Election Day. That could give him an opportunity, should he run for president again, to drop the federal charges against him or to try to pardon himself in the federal cases if he is convicted.

The timing of Trump’s criminal trials — two in federal court in Florida and Washington and two more in state courts in Georgia and New York — has added a layer of logistical complexity to the already fraught legal and political challenges of filing charges against him. he has another shot at the highest office in the land.

The events had to be placed not only in context on the calendar, but also against the backdrop of an increasingly busy campaign season. Complicating matters further, no single person or authority coordinated the arrangements, which at times resembled competing air traffic controllers trying to land four planes on the same runway as a hurricane brewed.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, have been fighting over the timing of the trial of the documents almost from the moment an indictment in the case was filed in Federal District Court in June in Fort Pierce, Florida. The indictment accuses the former president of illegally withholding 32 classified national security documents after leaving office and then conspiring with two personal aides to obstruct the government’s repeated efforts to recover the documents.

Mr. Trump’s legal team has repeatedly argued that the case should not go to trial until after the 2024 election is over. However, they rarely mention publicly that if that were to happen and Mr. Trump won the race, he could dismiss the charges by simply having his attorney general drop them.

Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said in court on Wednesday that something had to be done, suggesting it was unworkable to try the former president in Washington on the election interference charge in March and then suddenly order him in May to be retried in Florida on the undisclosed equipment charges.

“The real pressure on President Trump and on us, his counsel,” Mr. Blanche said, “is the compressed schedule in the Washington DC case, and the schedule in this case.”

Echoing that position, Christopher M. Kise, who is working on the case with Mr. Blanche, warned Judge Cannon about the “challenges of having close-in-time or even overlapping trials.”

Mr. Kise was something of a case study for his own argument, having dialed into the Florida hearing while on break from yet another of Mr. Trump’s lawsuits: a civil suit in Manhattan accusing his company of fraudulently to inflate prices. value of his real estate holdings.

Jay I. Bratt, a prosecutor in the special counsel’s office, began his own comments to Judge Cannon by accusing Mr. Trump’s lawyers of using the same tactics over and over again in the classified documents case — namely trying to ” postpone the case as long as they can.”

But Mr Bratt sidestepped Judge Cannon when she asked him if he could think of another situation in which a criminal defendant would stand trial in “multiple jurisdictions” and might face the “inevitable reality that the schedules could collide.”

While the questions about timing were consistent, some of the details discussed during the hearing were extremely technical.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have argued that one reason the trial should be delayed is to avoid rushing the complex process of receiving and processing the voluminous discovery evidence provided to them by the government and that material is then used to submit preliminary claims.

The attorneys also raised a host of logistical concerns that have delayed the case as it moves toward trial.

For example, Stanley Woodward Jr., a lawyer for Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta, said he had not yet received full security clearance for the most sensitive documents involved in the case.

There have also been delays in building secure facilities where the classified materials can be reviewed, including one in the Fort Pierce courthouse for Judge Cannon.

During the hearing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers gave a few hints about possible defenses they could use to fight charges in the case.

Mr Blanche said he could try to cast doubt on whether some documents actually contained so-called national defense information. He also suggested that even after leaving office, Mr. Trump had retained a special security clearance that authorized him to possess at least one of the classified documents he is accused of possessing.