Former President Donald Trump on Monday night asked the judge overseeing his classified documents case to postpone setting a trial date and suggested it should wait until after the election.
“President Trump is running for President of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee. This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on November 5, 2024,” his attorneys wrote.
“Furthermore, careful consideration will need to be given to the ability to seat an impartial jury under the current circumstances... There is simply no question any trial of this action during the pendency of a Presidential election will impact both the outcome of that election and, importantly, the ability of the Defendants to obtain a fair trial.”
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The filing came hours after Trump’s “body man” and co-defendant Walt Nauta asked for a four-day delay in a pretrial conference—a request that brought immediate opposition from Special Counsel Jack Smith.
“Almost a month has passed since the grand jury returned its indictment,” Smith wrote in his reply. “There is a strong public interest in the conference occurring as originally scheduled and the case proceeding as expeditiously as possible.”
The two sides eventually agreed to meet on July 18 to discuss the handling of top-secret documents in the case, which centers on Trump’s retention of classified material at Mar-a-Lago after he left office.
But Smith has not yet responded to Trump’s broader request, and Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has not yet ruled.
Trump and Nauta cited a litany of reasons why Cannon should reject the government’s request for a December trial date, including the massive amount of evidence—some of it classified—against them.
Their lawyers are still in the process of obtaining security clearances to view the files, and Trump and his attorneys are preparing for two other trials in New York—one criminal and one civil.
They also argued that Nauta—who is charged with moving boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago ahead of a search—would find an earlier trial date challenging because his job requires him to travel with Trump during the campaign.
