Judge denies attempt to delay Trump classified documents trial
FORT PIERCE – The federal judge overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump dealt a temporary blow to his legal team Friday, denying an attempt to postpone the trial until after the presidential election.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision comes two weeks after Trump’s attorneys said technical difficulties and belated access to evidence have turned an already aggressive schedule into a near-impossible one.
The lawyers said they need more time to review the 1.3 million documents and years’ worth of CCTV videos given to them by Special counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors ahead of the trial, which is scheduled to begin May 20.
The also pointed to the colliding schedules of three other criminal cases facing Trump: the election subversion case in Georgia; one in New York involving allegations of falsifying business records; and the election interference case in Washington, D.C.
Cannon acknowledged the overlapping schedules and “unusually high volume” of evidence in her order Friday, pushing back several deadlines for filing and responding to pretrial motions but not altering the trial date.
Cannon has denied the attorneys’ request for an indefinite delay once before, unconvinced that the discovery was too voluminous to tackle within the confines of the May 20 schedule.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche argued this month that subsequent indictments against the former president warranted her reconsideration.
Her denial was not a total loss for the Trump team.
Though she called their request “premature,” Cannon sympathized with the defense attorneys and promised Friday to reconsider their concerns during a hearing in March.
Despite his legal woes — and, some experts have said, possibly in part because of them — Trump remains the GOP presidential front-runner.
“Every time I’m indicted, I consider it a great badge of honor,” he told attendees at a rally in Hialeah Wednesday night. “I’m being indicted for you.”