Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee overseeing his Mar-a-Lago documents case, on Tuesday appeared skeptical of special counsel Jack Smith's request for a December trial but also seemed disinclined to push the trial schedule beyond the 2024 election as the former president's legal team had asked.
Smith's team urged Cannon to schedule a trial before the end of the year while Trump's lawyers asked her to delay the trial indefinitely, citing his presidential campaign.
Cannon on Tuesday directly asked Trump attorney Christopher Kise whether he wanted to delay the trial after the election, according to The New York Times. Kise acknowledged that he did and fellow Trump lawyer Todd Blanche later said that if Cannon must schedule a trial date, it should be in mid-November 2024.
David Harbach, a top Smith deputy, told Cannon that the rule of law should apply to Trump as it would to any defendant.
"Mr. Trump is not the president," Harbach said. "He is a private citizen who has been lawfully indicted by a grand jury in this district and his case should be guided by the federal code and the rules of this court like anyone else."
Blanche, however, argued that it was inappropriate for Cannon to "ignore" Trump's role as a candidate.
"It is intellectually dishonest to stand up in front of this court and say this case is like any other," Blanche said. "It is not."
Kise even suggested that the court battle over the classified documents was a legal version of the race between Trump and President Joe Biden, suggesting that the "two candidates were squaring off in this courtroom."
Harbach rejected Kise's argument, noting that Smith was appointed as special counsel to avoid the "specter of political influence."
"The government says that claim is flat-out false," Harbach said.
Cannon also appeared likely to set a date beyond the DOJ's requested timeline. Prosecutor Jay Bratt acknowledged that the DOJ had proposed an "aggressive schedule" but assured Cannon that his team was "committed to doing the work to achieve it."
But both Harbach and Bratt "seemed concerned" when Cannon raised the possibility of declaring it a "complex" case, which would slow its pace, according to the Times. Trump's lawyers "quickly seized that opportunity, saying they wanted a complex-case designation even if they had not formally made the request in court papers filed before the hearing."
Cannon during the hearing did not set a new date for the trial but said she would consider both arguments and issue a written decision "promptly."
She questioned the Trump team's argument that media attention on Trump would subside after the 2024 election and suggested that the large amount of discovery in the case, as well as issues related to classified materials and other matters, seemed like a more "suitable" framework to determine the trial timeline.
"I can appreciate that more time is necessary, but we need to set a schedule," she said.
Cannon, who faces heightened scrutiny after issuing a series of rulings in favor of Trump that was later overturned by an appeals court, "peppered prosecutors and the former president's lawyers with questions that suggested she was in command of her courtroom and well-versed in the facts of the case," wrote The Times' Alan Feuer.
Cannon's focus on the volume and complexity of discovery materials "suggests that Cannon is mindful of relying on grounds that won't be overturned on appeal," tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.
"She learned from her prior blunder," he wrote.
"Judge Cannon, who has been far too deferential to Donald Trump in past rulings, appears so far to be taking a relatively reasonable approach to the timing of trial in the Mar-a-Lago national security case. We'll see," agreed former federal prosecutor Noah Bookbinder, the head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Legal experts have been wary that Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, may aid Trump's efforts to push the trial beyond the election.
"His advisers have been, in private conversations, pretty blunt that they see it as he has to win the election and that how is he guarantees that he does not face jail time," New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN on Tuesday.
But Trump's plans were complicated this week when Smith sent him a letter informing him that he is the target of the DOJ's Jan. 6 probe, which signals that another indictment in D.C. may be imminent.
"This means that Trump will be indicted in the January 6th investigation. This indictment will likely be brought in D.C. federal court, which means that the importance of Judge Aileen Cannon's rulings in the Mar-a-Lago case are diminished," Mariotti wrote on Tuesday.
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin agreed that the implication of the Jan. 6 target letter is that even if Cannon caves to Trump's demands not to set ANY trial date, she now can't single-handedly prevent a federal trial before Election Day. The federal judges in DC have handled [hundreds] of 1/6 cases rapidly—and his should be no exception."
