As of: March 1, 2024, 9:49 a.m
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The timing between Trump's trials is tricky.
The Republican wants to further delay the US election.
As president he would have completely new opportunities.
ORLANDO - Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to postpone Donald Trump's trial over secret documents in Florida until July 8, likely after the Supreme Court rules on his claim for presidential immunity.
Meanwhile, Trump's lawyers are again trying to postpone the trial until after the next US presidential election, in which Trump is the Republican frontrunner.
The competing proposals came Thursday evening at the request of U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is holding a hearing Friday at her courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida.
She is expected to postpone the start of the trial, originally scheduled for the end of May, to deal with complicated evidence and other issues.
Joker for Trump trials: His options as US President
The timing of Trump's four criminal trials has become an increasingly important issue as the 2024 election season continues and he approaches the Republican nomination.
If Trump wins the election and takes office facing one of his two federal trials, he could try to appoint an attorney general to drop the charges.
Additionally, Justice Department policy generally prohibits criminal prosecution of a sitting president.
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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said it will schedule oral hearings in late April on Trump's claim that he is immune from prosecution for actions he committed while he was president.
That decision would likely delay his trial in Washington, D.C. for allegedly trying to prevent President Biden's 2020 election victory until at least the summer.
He is scheduled to stand trial in New York starting March 25 on charges of falsifying business records to allegedly conceal a hush-money payment during the 2016 election.
The trial is likely to last into May.
Trump wants the trial to begin in August: postponement should make it more difficult to obstruct the US election
In their court filing, Trump's lawyers suggested another scenario if Cannon rejects their argument for a post-election trial: a trial beginning in August.
But that timing could complicate the Justice Department's efforts to hold the federal election interference trial in Washington in late summer or fall.
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The Republican National Convention, where the party's presidential candidate will be formally nominated, is scheduled for July 15-18 in Milwaukee.
One week after the date proposed by prosecutors in their request to Cannon for the Florida trial to begin.
Friday's hearing is the first public hearing Cannon has held on the classified matter since November.
In that session, Cannon indicated she may delay the trial as courts grapple with the complex scheduling challenge.
This arises from the fact that Trump is accused in four different criminal proceedings, the trial times of which cannot overlap.
Government material in play in Trump trial: Classified material complicates proceedings
Trump is indicted in Florida on dozens of counts alleging he mishandled classified information after the end of his presidency and plotted with two aides to obstruct government efforts to remove the material from Mar-a-Lago, his home and private club in Palm Beach, to bring back.
He is also facing charges in Georgia for attempting to block the 2020 election results in that state.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in all cases.
In recent months, much of the classified information proceedings have taken place behind closed doors as Cannon and prosecutors and defense attorneys have had to navigate the additional legal steps required for trials involving restricted government information.
As a judge, Cannon must decide how to balance the rights of Trump, his co-defendants and the jury to see classified evidence with the prosecution's desire to protect information that could threaten national security and that the government believes is not relevant to Trump's defense are.
Next Trump trial session discusses applications: use material and names publicly?
Cannon on Wednesday rejected a request from Trump's lawyers to see additional classified documents that prosecutors have kept under seal in the case.
In that decision, the judge concluded that the access requested by Trump's team is not typically granted and that withholding the information would not affect his ability to mount a defense.
For Friday's hearing, which begins at 10 a.m. and is expected to last until the afternoon, Cannon has asked the parties to prepare to discuss recently filed motions.
Topics under discussion include: Trump's requests that the government submit more material for review as potential evidence, including emails and other documents that defense attorneys say could reveal political motivations for the prosecution of President Biden's likely general election opponent.
Cannon is also expected to discuss whether the names of witnesses and others involved in the case should be released - the subject of a long dispute between the two parties.
Trump's request Thursday also suggests the Florida trial could be split, with one of Trump's two co-defendants, his adviser Walt Nauta, given a different trial date.
Debate about immunity doesn't just affect Trump's Washington trial for storming the Capitol
While the issue of immunity that the Supreme Court will consider in April relates to Trump's prosecution in Washington, it could also impact the Florida case.
Trump argued in a filing last week that most of the charges against him in Florida should be dismissed - pointing out that he was still president when he packaged the classified documents and that he had dismissed them at the time personal material.
However, Trump was no longer president when federal officials tried to retrieve the material, and his lawyers did not argue that the obstruction of justice charges in Florida should be dismissed based on presidential immunity.
US President Donald Trump.
© Lev Radin/Imago
Instead, he moved to dismiss those charges on other grounds, including arguing that Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointment of special counsel Jack Smith to lead the investigation was invalid because Smith had not been confirmed by the Senate.
Cannon will now have to decide whether she sees enough similarities between the presidential immunity arguments in her case and D.C.'s case to stay her pretrial trial — at least on the charge of illegally storing classified information — pending the Supreme Court's decision .
To the authors
Perry Stein
covers the Justice Department and FBI for The Washington Post.
She previously covered education in Washington.
Before joining the Post in 2015, she was a staff writer at the Washington City Paper and wrote for the Miami Herald.
Devlin Barrett
writes about the FBI and the Justice Department and is the author of October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election.
He was part of the reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 and 2022.
In 2017, he was a co-finalist for the Pulitzer for Feature Writing and the Pulitzer for International Reporting.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on March 1, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com
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- as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.