Trump asks again to delay documents trial

Lawyers for former president Donald Trump have again asked a federal judge to postpone until after the 2024 election his trial on charges of mishandling classified documents.

In a court filing Wednesday night, Trump’s legal team proposed moving the start of the trial to mid-November from May 20, the date set by Judge Aileen Cannon.

It was not the first time. Trump has sought to push back the trial, in which he stands accused of illegally holding onto dozens of classified documents after leaving office and conspiring with two aides to obstruct the government’s repeated effort to retrieve them. In July, his lawyers asked Cannon to put off the trial indefinitely as they grappled with the complexities of the case.

But after a flurry of court filings and a contentious hearing this summer in US District

Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Cannon decided that the case should go in front of a jury well before the presidential race ended.

In their initial request to delay the trial, Trump’s lawyers claimed that he could not get a fair trial while he was running for office. But arguments like that were missing from his new proposal to push back the proceeding, which did not specifically mention the election. Still, the push to reschedule for mid-November 2024 was a de facto attempt to delay it until after the race was decided.

Were that to happen, it would give Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican nomination, enormous sway over the case. If the trial were delayed and Trump were to win the election, he could simply order his attorney general to drop the charges. And even if he were convicted before becoming president, he could in theory seek to pardon himself.

Federal prosecutors in Smith’s office have reacted with frustration to Trump’s attempts to delay both of the proceedings.