Trump seeks major trial delay, cites 2024 campaign, legal factors
Lawyers call any action this year ‘unreasonable’
Former president Donald Trump’s lawyers invoked the 2024 presidential campaign in court papers late Monday, arguing that for a host of legal and political reasons, Trump’s classified documents trial should be pushed far past the December time frame proposed by the Justice Department.
In a 12-page filing, lawyers Christopher Kise and Todd Blanche asserted that putting the former president on trial later this year for alleged mishandling of classified papers and obstruction — even as he seeks the Republican nomination to return to the White House — would be “unreasonable, telling, and would result in a miscarriage of justice.”
The lawyers asked US District Judge Aileen M. Cannon not to set a date for the trial for the time being, while the two sides work through pretrial motions and hearings. They suggested that to ensure a fair jury, the trial should not be held until after the presidential election.
Trump, the first former president ever charged with a crime, is the front-runner in the Republican presidential field. He and his longtime aide, Waltine “Walt” Nauta, were charged last month in a 38-count indictment, setting the stage for a high-profile, high-stakes trial likely to test not just Trump’s popularity within his party and the country but also the criminal justice system’s ability to seek and win a conviction of a former president.
The first pretrial meeting in the case is scheduled for next Tuesday. At that hearing, lawyers for Trump and the federal government may spar further about the schedule and the consequences of holding a criminal trial of a presidential candidate in the midst of a political campaign.
Technically, Cannon has already set a trial date in August. But that is a placeholder, as are most trial dates set shortly after an indictment. Whatever trial date Cannon sets at this early stage will be less of a promise and more of a goal post — one which can and often does move to accommodate delays caused by legal arguments over evidence and case precedent. Some pretrial issues in the Trump case, particularly involving the classified evidence he allegedly withheld from the government, could be appealed, a process which could significantly alter whatever calendar Cannon sets.
Still, Trump’s request shows that a key part of his legal strategy will be trying to delay the schedule proposed by federal prosecutors, who asked Cannon last month to set the trial in December. In ruling on the dueling proposals, Cannon — a Trump nominee whose actions are being closely scrutinized — will offer her first signal about how quickly she wants the case to move.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to handle the Trump investigation with independence from Justice Department leadership, told Cannon he was pushing for a December trial date because the case “involves straightforward theories of liability, and does not present novel questions of fact or law.”
Trump’s lawyers disagreed in their filing, arguing the case hinges on untested legal questions about the Presidential Records Act and saying the stakes are simply too high to hold the trial during the 2024 campaign, since the outcome could impact the presidential contest.
The defense lawyers also argue that Trump cannot realistically be prepared to go to trial later this year, given the two other trials he is facing: a March 2024 criminal trial in Manhattan on state charges related to hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign, and a civil trial, scheduled to begin in October in New York, over fraud allegations leveled by the New York attorney general.
Those issues, in addition to the large amounts of evidence that need to be reviewed, and the complexity of preparing for a trial involving classified material, means a trial in just six months would be unfair, the lawyers wrote.
In yet another case involving the former president, a grand jury being seated in Atlanta will likely consider whether criminal charges are appropriate for Trump or his Republican allies for their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating since shortly after Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in early 2021 and suggested the state’s top elections official could help him “find 11,780 votes,” just enough needed to beat Democrat Joe Biden. The 2½-year investigation expanded to include an examination of a slate of Republican fake electors, phone calls by Trump and others to Georgia officials in the weeks after the 2020 election, and unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud made to state lawmakers. Willis, a Democrat, is expected to present her case before one of two new grand juries being seated.