Judge Aileen Cannon has handed another reprieve to Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
The case was expected to be one of Trump’s first criminal trials to go to court, but any trial date now appears to be up in the air after Cannon on Monday ordered a stay on Trump’s legal requirement to give the government advance notice of which classified materials will be discussed. But the stay—which is described as temporary—also has no set expiration date.
Legal analysts have worried that a strategy of continual delays could be the Trump-appointed judge’s way of surreptitiously dismissing the trial altogether.
“This case was set for trial on May 20, which obviously won’t happen,” wrote MSNBC legal analyst and former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance. “It should have been ready to try by the end of last year. Extending the 5(a) deadlines indefinitely is the same thing as giving Trump an indefinite trial delay.”
In March, Trump tried twice to get the case dismissed, arguing in separate motions that it wasn’t clear when he took the sensitive material whether doing so was illegal and that the classified documents could be considered “personal materials” rather than presidential ones under the Presidential Records Act. The latter defense was roundly rejected by special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which pointed to a transcript of Trump’s own words in which the former president acknowledged the records definitely were not personal.
Meanwhile, Trump has practically confessed that he took the sensitive records. In an interview on Newsmax, Trump claimed point blank that he actually did take the classified documents, describing the process of shamelessly packing them away while leaving office.
“I took ’em very legally,” Trump said. “And I wasn’t hiding them.”
Ultimately, Cannon’s extended time allowance for the GOP presidential nominee just presents another roadblock to actually trying the former president for any of his alleged misconduct. The Supreme Court is still deliberating Trump’s presidential immunity claim, which leaped out of the former president’s election interference trial and challenges whether Trump could be charged at all for alleged crimes he committed while in office. The high court is expected to issue its opinion sometime between late June and early July.
Source Agencies
