Judge declines to push back Trump's classified documents trial but postpones other deadlines
A federal judge in Florida on Friday declined to delay Donald Trump’s classified documents trial, calling a request by the former president’s defense lawyers to postpone the date “premature.” But she postponed other deadlines in the case and signaled that she would revisit the trial date later.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is at least a modest victory for special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which had vigorously rejected efforts to push off the trial beyond its scheduled start date of May 20, 2024. Trump’s lawyers had argued that they needed more time to review the large trove of evidence with which they’d been presented and cited scheduling challenges resulting from the other legal cases against Trump, including three additional criminal prosecutions for which he is awaiting trial.
Cannon signaled during a hearing this month, and again in her written order on Friday, that she was sympathetic to the defense arguments. She noted the “unusually high volume of classified and unclassified evidence” involved in the case, as well as the fact that Trump is currently scheduled next March to face a federal trial in Washington and a trial on state charges in New York.
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