Some legal analysts and former federal officials predicted that former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case likely won’t start on the current timeline and may impact other Trump cases.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pushed back a meeting with prosecutors to review classified materials until February, and later, she ordered that a court hearing involving Trump lawyers’ requested documents will be held in March.
Brian Greer, a former CIA lawyer who had worked cases involving classified records, told The Daily Beast news website that the trial could be delayed by up to four months. He said that the current dates in the Florida case could also impact other cases.
“The tricky thing is, it puts them in limbo. Another judge could schedule something for May but may not want to, because it’s possible trial will still go in May. If you’re a cynic—and I’m not—you might say she deliberately did this,” Mr. Greer told the outlet in an article that was largely critical of President Trump and Judge Cannon.
The former CIA lawyer, speaking also to Politico, claimed that Judge Cannon’s recent decisions “could be seen as a stealth attempt to delay the ultimate trial date without actually announcing that, yet, adding there is “pretty much no chance they could go to trial on May 20 with the current schedule.” He was referring to the judge’s scheduled date for the trial.
“The signals are of a court that is proceeding slowly and methodically through the process,” Brandon Van Grack, a former national security prosecutor who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s legal team, told Politico The former prosecutor added, “In order to have a trial by May, the court would just need to push the parties on a tighter deadline.”
David Aaron, a former Justice Department national security prosecutor agree with that assessment and said a May 20 trial is not a likely prospect. He noted that the case also involves two other defendants, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago manager Carlos de Oliveira.
“With three defendants all having the opportunity to make motions, it could be that at least one of the defense teams decides to move to use a lot of classified information as evidence,” Mr. Aaron told Politico, which published the article with a headline that essentially accused Judge Cannon of “slowing down” the case.
None of the parties involved case have publicly responded to the reports from the Daily Beast, Politico, or other outlets claiming the trial could be delayed.
The former president’s classified materials trial, which potentially involves tens of thousands of documents, could last for several weeks. As President Trump is currently the leading GOP presidential candidate, the Republican National Convention is scheduled for July 15.
“Could she try to squeeze it in before that? Maybe, but I doubt she’d do that,” Mr. Greer told the outlet, responding to timetable and scheduled dates in the case.
As for the May 20 trial date, Judge Cannon said several weeks ago that it might not be realistic.
“I’m just having a hard time seeing how realistically this work can be accomplished in this compressed period of time, given the realities that we’re facing,” she told lawyers at a hearing, adding she will set a new timeline “as soon as possible.”
In a court filing, the judge also noted the “unusually high volume of classified and unclassified evidence” involved in the case, as well as the fact that President Trump is currently scheduled next March to face both a federal trial in Washington and a trial on state charges in New York.
Much of federal prosecutors’ evidence in the case is classified, and a 1980 law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) provides rules on how evidence should be presented and reviewed. Some analysts have suggested that the Trump documents trial is Judge Cannon’s first CIPA-related case.
President Trump’s lawyers had argued that they needed more time to review the large trove of evidence with which they’d been presented and also cited scheduling challenges resulting from the other legal cases against the former president, including three additional criminal prosecutions for which he is awaiting trial. The special counsel team had vigorously opposed that position in urging the judge to leave the trial date intact.
In court papers filed this month, federal prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith filed court papers in both the classified documents and Jan. 6 election cases that claimed the former president is trying to delay “both trials at any cost.”
“As the government argued to the court yesterday, the trial date in the District of Columbia case should not be a determinative factor in the court’s decision whether to modify the dates in this matter,” the special counsel said. “Defendant Trump’s actions in the hours following the hearing in this case illustrate the point and confirm his overriding interest in delaying.”
