Trump classified documents case trial date remains up in the air

First former president to face federal charges did not attend the first pre-trial hearing

Donald Trump's legal team wants the trial to be postponed until after the 2024 presidential election. Reuters

A federal judge in Florida did not immediately set a trial date in the classified documents prosecution against Donald Trump on Tuesday.

But Judge Aileen Cannon expressed scepticism about arguments from the government and the former president’s lawyer, Bloomberg News reported.

Mr Trump and his aide Walt Nauta were charged with 37 and 38 counts, respectively, of conspiring to hide classified documents that were transferred to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office in 2021.

Ms Cannon said she would issue an order after the hearing to address the first fight between prosecutors and Mr Trump in the case.

The government wants a trial in December and the former president’s lawyers do not want any date set for now.

Setting a schedule for the coming months – a relatively uncontroversial step in a typical trial – has major consequences for Mr Trump as he intensifies his 2024 campaign with his legal risks increasing.

He is the first former president to face federal prosecution. He did not attend the hearing.

Ms Cannon indicated some scepticism about the Trump team’s arguments that his 2024 campaign schedule and the publicity and political climate were grounds to delay setting a trial date until after the election.

She told them to focus their push for a longer timeline on the volume of evidence, the complexity of issues related to classified material and the scope of pretrial arguments they want to raise.

That was a “more suitable” framework to guide her scheduling decisions, Ms Cannon said.

But she also suggested that she had concerns about the government’s proposed December trial date, at one point asking lead prosecutor Jay Bratt if there were any previous cases involving classified information that unfolded “on such a compressed timetable".

Ms Cannon said she had to leave enough time to resolve all motions the defence might raise, even if the government believed the case was straightforward.

US special counsel Jack Smith asked Ms Cannon on Monday to issue an order that would partially restrict defence lawyers' ability to share classified information with Mr Trump and Mr Nauta.

Lawyers for the two defendants have already been ordered to seek national security clearances.

Ms Cannon became a central figure in the classified files case last year when she granted Mr Trump's request for a special master to review thousands of documents that FBI agents had seized at Mar-a-Lago.

A federal appeals court overturned the ruling.