The federal judge overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump will hold a key hearing in Florida on Friday as she considers pushing back the trial date of May 20.
The hearing is set to begin in Fort Pierce at 10 a.m. ET and should last most of the day. The judge, Aileen Cannon, has left several issues about how to proceed with the documents case unresolved. Trump is expected to attend the hearing.
In filings Thursday night that had been requested by Cannon, special counsel Jack Smith’s office suggested pushing the trial back to July 8, while Trump’s lawyers proposed an Aug. 12 start date. Trump’s attorneys also made clear that they believe the trial should be pushed back until after November’s election.
“As the leading candidate in the 2024 election, President Trump strongly asserts that a fair trial cannot be conducted this year in a manner consistent with the Constitution, which affords President Trump a Sixth Amendment right to be present and to participate in these proceedings” and “a First Amendment right that he shares with the American people to engage in campaign speech,” they wrote.
Both sides also submitted a lengthy joint proposal for a questionnaire for potential jurors, but there were some areas among the 99 questions where they did not agree, including how long the trial will take. Smith’s office estimated four to six weeks, while Trump’s team put it at eight to 10 weeks. Smith’s team also wants to ask potential jurors if they believe the 2020 election was stolen; Trump’s side wants to know whether they voted that year.
But they agreed on potential jurors questions like who they admire the most and least —and why — and what bumper stickers they might have on their cars.
Cannon had hinted in a November ruling about potentially delaying the trial, citing Trump’s complaints about the amount of discovery and documents that his legal team will have to review. She suggested that the former president will need significant time to review the evidence, but she acknowledged that she has to balance that “against the public’s right to a speedy trial.”
In the November ruling, the judge said she needed to consider the “unusually high volume of unclassified and classified discovery” in the case, which she said included 1.3 million pages of unclassified discovery and 60 terabytes of closed-circuit television footage spanning at least nine months, as well as 5,500 pages of classified discovery.
Cannon also acknowledged that other dates for trials in which Trump is the defendant factor in to when the Florida trial will take place. She said at the time that “the schedules as they currently stand overlap substantially with the deadlines in this case, presenting additional challenges to ensuring Defendant Trump has adequate time to prepare for trial and to assist in his defense.”
Trump is facing 40 criminal charges in the case, including willful retention of national defense information, false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and corruptly concealing documents. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Trump’s co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveria, have also pleaded not guilty to related charges against them in the indictment. Smith’s office accused Nauta, Trump’s close aide, and De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago property manager, of trying to delete security video at the Palm Beach club after the Justice Department sought to obtain it.
Cannon’s decision will be critical in shaping the timeline for Trump’s court proceedings this year as he also faces trials in three other cases: the hush money charges in New York and separate election interference charges in Washington, D.C., and Fulton County, Georgia.
The New York trial will begin late next month, with jury selection scheduled to begin March 25, and is estimated to last about six weeks. The Washington trial, which was originally set for March 4, was indefinitely postponed as the Supreme Court weighs Trump’s claims of presidential immunity. A trial in the Georgia case has not been scheduled, and it’s up in the air whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will be able to prosecute the case following misconduct claims against her. On Friday afternoon, a Fulton County judge is hearing closing arguments on the motion to disqualify Willis.
In every case, Trump has sought to either get the charges tossed or at least delay key deadlines to buy as much time as possible to avoid trials before November’s presidential election. Last week, Trump filed several motions in the Florida case, arguing that the charges should be dismissed because of presidential immunity, the vagueness of a statute Trump was charged with as it relates to presidents, the alleged unconstitutionality of special counsel appointments, and the Presidential Records Act.
Trump has said that he had the right to take classified documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The superseding 40-count indictment brought by the special counsel’s office last July alleged that Trump obstructed the ongoing federal investigation by being part of a scheme to delete security video at Mar-a-Lago to conceal boxes of classified documents that the National Archives had said he must return.
Dareh Gregorian contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
