New lifeline for Donald Trump in his troubles with justice. The judge in the Mar-a-Lago papers case has indefinitely delayed this Tuesday the start of the trial for the former president’s handling of hundreds of classified documents that he took without permission from the White House after losing the 2020 elections.
Aileen M. Cannon, who has received criticism in the past for being too sympathetic to the defense’s aspirations during the trial of the case, cited in a five-page ruling “important questions surrounding the evidence” that must be resolved before for the case to be presented to the jury. To do otherwise, she writes, “would be reckless and inconsistent with the court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pretrial motions.”
Cannon had initially set a start date for the process for the end of this month of May. With the new resolution, it seems very unlikely that a verdict will be reached (let alone a sentence set) before November 5, the day of the presidential elections, in which Trump, the Republican candidate, will face each other again, four years then, to Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election.
In his order Tuesday, Cannon set out a series of new pretrial deadlines that the parties must meet. The only certainty at the moment is that nothing will happen until after July 22, when a procedural requirement established by the Classified Information Procedures Law must be met, the rule that governs this case.
The previous date of May 20 was set by Cannon, ignoring requests from the defense, who asked that its start be left until after the elections, and from the special prosecutor appointed by the Department of Justice, Jack Smith, who requested that it begin in December. 2023. This time, Smith hoped that the judge would not leave him beyond July 8, but she has refused. There was never any discussion about the location: the trial will be held in Fort Pierce, a city in Florida about 200 kilometers from Miami, where the federal judge has her seat.
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In the case of the Mar-a-Lago papers, the former president is being tried for handling hundreds of secret or classified documents that he took without permission to his private residence in Palm Beach, which is also a hotel and a social club, when He left the White House in January 2021. Those papers, like those of any American president when he leaves office, belong by law to the National Archives. He is also accused of refusing to return them when authorities repeatedly asked him to do so. These resistances led to an FBI search on August 8, 2022, during which 48 boxes were seized.
Trump faces 37 crimes: 31 of them for intentional retention of national defense information contained in as many documents; three, for keeping and hiding papers from federal investigations; two for falsehood; and the last, for conspiracy to obstruct justice with one of his employees, Walt Nauta. He is also accused of doubling up on tasks such as helping the boss manage sensitive material, as well as lying to the authorities.
Parallel processes
The main defendant pleaded “not guilty” in an appearance in Miami last June. The Mar-a-Lago papers were his second indictment, after the one in New York, which made history for being the first against a former American president. Trump is these days in Manhattan sitting in the dock in a trial for an alleged electoral crime associated with the payment to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 elections. If the initial date of the Florida case had been respected, the judges would have had to agree so as not to hinder both procedures.
Additionally, Trump has two other trials pending. One in Washington, for his alleged responsibility in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, perpetrated by a mob of his followers after a rally in the capital on the day in which Congress was to certify the legitimate and peaceful transfer of presidential power to Biden. And the other, in Atlanta, for the maneuvers he carried out to try to alter the electoral result in Georgia, a state in which he lost in 2020, and in which he left something like half of the presidency.
At this point, the possibility that only the Stormy Daniels case It is gaining more and more strength, thanks to the successful delay maneuvers of its defense in the different processes.
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