Judge Aileen Cannon FOR the Defense……
On paper, she has scheduled a trial to open next May in the case charging Donald Trump with hoarding national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago.
In reality, she has run the pretrial process at a leisurely pace that will make a postponement almost inevitable, according to experts on criminal prosecutions related to classified information.
Delaying Trump’s trial until after the November election would have a momentous implication: It might mean the trial never happens at all. If Trump wins the election and the case is still pending, he’s expected to order the Justice Department to shut it down.
Even a shorter delay would be fraught: Pushing the trial into the summer or fall could run headlong into the Republican National Convention or the heart of the general election campaign.
For now, Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal district judge in Florida, is officially sticking with the May 20 trial date she announced four months ago. She even recently denied Trump’s bid to push it back. But in a series of more technical rulings, Cannon has postponed key pretrial deadlines, and she has added further slack into the schedule simply by taking her time to resolve some fairly straightforward matters.
It could be seen as a stealth attempt to delay the ultimate trial date without actually announcing that yet,” said Brian Greer, a former Central Intelligence Agency attorney.
“There’s pretty much no chance they could go to trial on May 20 with the current schedule,” he added…..
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Cannon’s approach stands in stark contrast with her counterpart in Washington, Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the other federal criminal case against Trump. (Trump faces separate state-level criminal charges in Georgia and New York.)
The case in Washington, involving Trump’s efforts to interfere with the 2020 election results, is scheduled for trial in March — and Chutkan, an Obama appointee, has seemed determined to stick with that timeline. She has repeatedly insisted that she will not, and cannot, consider Trump’s political schedule as she sets deadlines for the case.
Cannon, in contrast, has so far danced around the issue of whether Trump should get any deference in scheduling because of his status as a presidential candidate. But those questions may soon become impossible to dodge.
The classified documents trial is expected to last for weeks or longer. If the May 20 start date proves infeasible, the trial could risk overlapping with the Republican convention, set to open July 15 in Milwaukee.
“Could she try to squeeze it in before that? Maybe, but I doubt she’d do that,” Greer said…..