Lawyers for Donald Trump have once again suggested to the federal judge overseeing his criminal case on retaining classified documents that the trial should not take place this year, even as they complied with a court order that forced them to propose a potential start date.
On Thursday, the former president reluctantly proposed two trial dates, under orders from US district judge Aileen Cannon: a 12 August trial date for Trump and the Mar-a-Lago club maintenance chief Carlos De Oliveira, and a 9 September trial date for Trump’s valet Walt Nauta.
But the nine-page court filing from Trump was clear in its tone and reasoning that a trial should not take place until 2025, claiming that prosecutors were seeking to rush to trial on an unprecedented schedule because they wanted an outcome before the presidential election in November.
In a filing submitted at the same time on Thursday, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith asked Cannon to schedule the trial for 8 July for all three defendants, a date that would almost certainly ensure that a verdict is returned before the 2024 election.
Trump’s request marked his latest attempt to push back the case, having taken every opportunity to ask Cannon to delay proceedings since he was indicted last year for violating the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice.
In their first request to delay the trial indefinitely, Trump claimed he could not get a fair trial while he was running for office, asking the judge to also take into account the political calendar in the months before the election.
That argument was repeated again in the new filing, which also claimed that Trump’s status as the presumptive GOP nominee meant prosecutors would be violating justice department rules that prohibit overt investigative steps close to an election if a trial took place this year.
Whether Cannon will acquiesce to Trump’s request remains uncertain. Last year, she implicitly rejected Trump’s arguments concerning the election when she set a tentative trial date for May, finding a middle ground between the dueling schedules that Trump and prosecutors had proposed.
The judge could again attempt to find a middle ground as she weighs setting a new trial date, with the pre-trial phase of the documents case running roughly four months behind schedule, according to a Guardian analysis.
The documents case has been mired in delays as a result of how slowly Cannon has proceeded through the seven-step process laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, which governs how classified documents can be introduced at trial in Espionage Act cases.
Trump could have an advantage in trying to convince the judge to add further delays, after she expressed concern last year that Trump’s criminal cases in New York and Washington could “collide” with the documents case in Florida because they were scheduled to start between March and May.
But Trump’s legal calendar has shifted since Cannon made those remarks in November.
Trump’s first criminal case in New York, over hush-money payments made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, will start on 25 March and is expected to last six weeks. Meanwhile, the 2020 election interference case in Washington is in effect delayed indefinitely until the US supreme court decides whether Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution.
In that sense, Trump’s legal calendar is now free of conflicts from May onwards, allowing Cannon to adopt either scheduling proposal from Trump or prosecutors, or again set a tentative trial start somewhere between the two suggested dates.
