The federal judge presiding over former President Donald J. Trump's classified documents case on Monday granted his request to overturn one of his rulings and delay a key court filing deadline in the criminal case, ruling out any trial. There is a growing possibility that the deadline will be postponed. November election.
The ruling by Judge Eileen M. Cannon was a bare-bones order with no factual or legal basis. He did not set a new deadline, but the deadline set about a month ago for Mr. Trump's lawyers to submit by Thursday a detailed list of classified materials they plan to present at trial has been lifted. Somewhere in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida.
This list, if submitted, will be the first step in what will ultimately become a fierce battle between the defense and prosecution over what kind of classified material the jury will hear at trial. This list is very important. It is a matter of public access and national security and could take several months to complete.
Mr. Trump has relentlessly pursued a strategy to postpone all four criminal cases he faces, and if he succeeds in delaying his trial on charges of mishandling classified documents until after the election, he will ask the Justice Department to He could order that the case be dropped completely. If he wins.
Judge Cannon's extension of the filing deadline is just the latest example of the judge agreeing to Mr. Trump's efforts to delay the classified documents trial. She has yet to select a new date, even though she held a hearing in Fort Pierce on March 1 to specifically change the current May 20 trial start.
And she was unable to take any decisions on some important motions, leading to further delays.
The current dispute began about a month ago, when Trump's lawyers asked Judge Cannon to postpone a looming Thursday deadline until at least June. Their argument was not complicated at first glance. They said they were too busy compiling a list of classified exhibits because they were defending the former president in another criminal trial. In that criminal trial in Manhattan, he is accused of falsifying business records to preserve his gender. The scandal that damaged the 2016 presidential election campaign.
But on Monday afternoon, lawyers presented a new basis for the delay. Prosecutors in Special Counsel Jack Smith's office argued that they failed to properly secure confidential material at the heart of the case after confiscating it for nearly two years. from Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private club and residence in Florida.
Without outright accusing Smith's team of wrongdoing, the lawyers said prosecutors made serious mistakes and will assess the situation before presenting confidential material they intended to present at trial. He hinted that he needed time.
In making this argument, lawyers said some of the documents in some of the boxes that Smith's prosecutors seized from Mar-a-Lago on Friday may no longer be in the same order as they were at the time. He took advantage of his confession that he had admitted that. collected by the FBI
The prosecution described the movement of the contents of the box. They noted that shortly after the materials were seized, the order of the documents in the box may have been changed slightly due to a review of the documents by an independent arbitrator requested by Trump himself and approved by Judge Cannon. He said that there is a sex.
Prosecutors also said the materials, including index cards, books and stationery, were relatively small and may have been accidentally moved as the boxes were moved from place to place during the investigation of the case.
Mr. Trump's lawyers have not formally accused the special counsel's office of wrongdoing, but in Monday's filing they raised the possibility of what they called “theft of evidence.” In addition, they took advantage of the fact that some of the documents in some boxes may have moved.
The fact that Judge Cannon agreed to the extension suggests how much leeway he has given Mr. Trump's legal team in their efforts to defend him.
Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, has repeatedly taken seriously arguments that many, if not most, federal judges would have summarily rejected. In many cases, her acceptance of Mr. Trump's unconventional claims led to significant delays in presenting her charges to juries in her classified documents case.