Trump documents case trial set to begin in mid-August

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Florida has ordered that a jury trial in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump over alleged mishandling of classified material should begin as early as August 14.

Judge Aileen Cannon, a federal judge in South Florida appointed by Trump, set the ambitious timetable, ordering pre-trial motions to be filed by July 24. Those motions could delay the beginning of the trial well beyond August. But the speed of Cannon’s proposed trial schedule may complicate efforts by Trump’s legal team to delay the proceedings with extensive pre-trial litigation.

Cannon has come under scrutiny over her past decisions involving the federal investigation into the president’s handling of documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, raising questions among legal experts whether she had expressed favoritism toward Trump from the bench.

The trial would take place at the Fort Pierce federal courthouse, about 70 miles north of West Palm Beach, where Cannon regularly sits for cases. Fort Pierce is in St. Lucie County, where a majority of voters supported Trump over Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.

Trump faces 37 felony counts of mishandling and illegally retaining classified material, including some of the most sensitive secrets in the U.S. government such as details on the U.S. nuclear arsenal, attack plans against American adversaries and vulnerabilities to the national security of the United States.

The public first learned of the federal inquiry into Trump’s handling of classified documents in August of last year, when the FBI conducted a search of his Florida property.

A federal judge had signed off on the search warrant. But in an unusual decision, Cannon granted a request by Trump’s attorneys to establish a special master that would have independently reviewed all of the retrieved material, slowing down federal investigators’ access to the documents and their work on the case. Cannon’s decision was overturned by an appellate court with a conservative majority, which rebuked Cannon for abusing her authority.

Former attorneys on Trump’s legal team who worked on the case have said publicly that they expect the former president to try to delay the proceedings as much as possible. Trump is running for president again in 2024, and could make the case that he is immune from prosecution if he is reelected to the White House without the case resolved.

After Trump was arraigned in a federal courthouse in Miami last week, legal experts said they did not expect the case to go to trial for years. But Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the case, has said he would seek a “speedy trial” of the former president.

“Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk,” Smith said on June 9 in announcing the indictment. “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”