Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks through the Turning Point Motion Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, July 15, 2023.
Marco Bello | Reuters
Former President Donald Trump’s trial on charges of mishandling classified documents will begin on May 20, 2024, a federal judge ordered Friday.
Judge Aileen Cannon laid out the schedule three days after defense lawyers argued that the case mustn’t head to trial until after the November 2024 presidential election, attributable to Trump’s status as a current presidential candidate.
The trial will happen in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida, Cannon ordered.
The ruling from Cannon lands on a middle ground between the requests of Trump’s legal team and the Department of Justice, which had pushed for the trial to start in late 2023.
Polls show Trump is currently leading the 2024 Republican primary field. If the case moves forward as currently scheduled, the trial would come after a slew of key states have already held their nominating contests. The Republican National Convention, where the GOP will select its presidential nominee, is ready to happen in Milwaukee in mid-July 2024.
“Today’s order by Judge Cannon is a serious setback to the DOJ’s crusade to disclaim President Trump a good legal process,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said in an announcement Friday afternoon.
“The extensive schedule allows President Trump and his legal team to proceed fighting this empty hoax,” the spokesperson said. The statement also suggested without evidence that the Biden administration launched the criminal case with a purpose to thwart Trump’s probabilities within the 2024 election.
Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, declined to comment on the judge’s ruling.
Trump last month pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal counts related to his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and subsequent alleged efforts to hide them from the federal government. Walt Nauta, his valet and co-defendant, has pleaded not guilty to 6 criminal charges.
The case has been assigned to Cannon, a Trump appointee who had previously faced criticism after ruling in Trump’s favor in a separate legal dispute related to the classified records.
Last week, Trump’s attorneys had requested Cannon postpone setting a trial date and asked her to reject the DOJ’s request to begin the trial in mid-December. Cannon appeared skeptical of each parties’ requests in a hearing Tuesday afternoon, NBC News reported.
Cannon’s seven-page ruling Friday morning noted that each the prosecutors and the defendants agreed that the trial needs to be held later than its original Aug. 14 start date.
But, she wrote, “As a preliminary matter, the Court rejects Defendants’ request to withhold setting of a schedule now.”
The DOJ’s proposal to begin the trial in December, meanwhile, “is atypically accelerated and inconsistent with ensuring a good trial,” she added.
The case includes a large amount of evidence, including greater than 1.1 million pages of records, no less than nine months of camera footage and no less than 1,545 pages of classified discovery — plus more content that has yet to be turned over, Cannon noted.
The proven fact that the case centers on classified records also adds complexity, the judge wrote, citing the necessity for the parties to review the sensitive documents “under appropriate safeguards and following resolution of pending logistics.”
Cannon’s schedule laid out dozens of procedural deadlines ahead of the spring 2024 trial. The subsequent crop of deadlines concern a piece of the federal statute that governs how classified information might be handled. The federal government has until Sept. 7 to show over relevant classified documents to the defense in discovery.Â
The case in Florida marks the primary time a president, current or former, has faced criminal charges from the federal government. But it surely’s the second set of criminal charges Trump has faced since launching his latest White House bid — and it is probably not the last.
In Latest York, Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to an alleged hush money scheme to bury allegations of his extramarital affairs.
Meanwhile, Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis has signaled she could soon seek indictments in her investigation of efforts by Trump and his allies to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to President Joe Biden.
Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the federal probe into the classified documents stored at Trump’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, can be heading a separate probe into the events of Jan. 6, 2021, within the technique of transferring presidential power.
That criminal probe appears to be rapidly moving toward charges: Trump announced Tuesday that the special counsel informed him that he’s a goal within the investigation.
