Trump’s Legal Team Seeks Delay In Classified Docs Trial – Trump News Today

Attorneys for former President Donald Trump on Friday filed another motion with the federal judge overseeing his classified documents trial, seeking to postpone the trial date until August in a move that stunned some legal observers.

Newsweek reported that the August 12 start date for the trial requested by Trump’s team in U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s court is just a month after the date requested by special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors.

The outlet added:

In a submission to Judge Cannon on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers give a list of days when Trump will not be available for trial, including the 2024 presidential election primaries and the Stormy Daniels hush money trial in New York.

Advertisement

The suggestion of an August 12 trial date is surprising as Trump had been advocating for a postponement of the trial until after the 2024 presidential election in November. However, 

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Trump is deliberately seeking an August trial date to stop Judge Tanya Chutkan from beginning Trump’s election fraud trial any time in the summer.

At present, Chutkan is waiting on the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Trump is entitled to presidential immunity for actions taken after the November 2020 election and in his classified documents case. “She has said in court that she would clear her summer schedule to make way for the Trump trial once the Supreme Court has issued its ruling,” Newsweek added.

“At first, I was surprised Trump was not asking for an outright stay,” Rubin wrote, adding that she then came to believe that it is a legal strategy.

“This is a coded invitation to Judge Cannon to schedule absolutely nothing—or in the alternative, a trial date that would effectively block Judge Chutkan from trying the case before her before the election,” she added on X.

Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is warning Democrats that the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday gave Trump “a gift.”

Toobin stated on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Trump may only have to appear in court for one of his four trials before Election Day because the court decided to hear arguments in late April regarding whether or not the former president enjoys complete immunity.

The “ruling is a gift to Trump, even if the Justices ultimately rule against him on immunity. A decision in late June makes a D.C. trial on 1/6 issues nearly impossible. 3/25 NYC trial in the Stormy case will be the only Trump criminal trial before Election Day,” wrote Toobin.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney also noted, “The court’s decision to keep the pretrial proceedings frozen is a blow to special counsel Jack Smith’s effort to bring Trump to trial this year. Smith has charged Trump with four felonies stemming from his bid to subvert the 2020 presidential election.”

#SCOTUS ruling is a gift to Trump, even if the Justices ultimately rule against him on immunity. A decision in late June makes a DC trial on 1/6 issues nearly impossible. 3/25 NYC trial in the Stormy case will be the only Trump criminal trial before Election Day.

— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) February 28, 2024

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, argued this week that the Supreme Court’s decision to consider Trump’s presidential immunity was a “real victory.”

The Supreme Court declared on Wednesday that it would hear the case following Trump’s request for a stay of an appeals court decision that disregarded his claims of immunity from prosecution. Attorneys for Trump charged that Special Counsel Jack Smith was trying the case ahead of the 2024 presidential election with “a political motive.”

“The real victory here for Trump deals with the calendar,” Turley told “Special Report” host Bret Baier. “You know, the overriding push of Smith, the special counsel, has been to get a trial before the election. He is running out of runway. If this opinion doesn’t come out until June, perhaps, you have to remember that even if Smith wins, the mandate goes back to the district court, which has to handle all the pre-trial motions. That could take months.”

Advertisement