In a baffling turn of events, the Donald Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing his Mar-a-Lago classified documents debacle appears to have placed the case on warp speed—setting a trial just two months away.
On Monday morning, federal court records showed that U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon created what's referred to as a “rocket docket” to speed his trial through the system.
Cannon issued an order stating that the most historic criminal trial in American history will commence Aug. 14. That’s just 55 days away, while most federal trials take up to a year or more as both sides prepare for an epic showdown in court.
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Peter Carr, a spokesman for Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, could not confirm that this decision was correct, and not simply a typo. Trump’s defense lawyers did not immediately respond to questions.
Legal scholars have noted that this judge is something of a loose cannon, consistently making puzzling decisions that lean heavily in favor of the president who appointed her in his final months in office.
When she previously oversaw another case, Trump’s legal challenge to the initial search of his south Florida oceanside estate of Mar-a-Lago, she inserted herself on dubious authority to halt the FBI investigation with red tape.
The New York Times, having reviewed her extremely short history on the bench so far, recently determined that she has spent only 14 days overseeing four criminal trials—a jaw-dropping level of inexperience for someone who is about to judge such a consequential trial involving long-lasting precedent on the nation’s democracy.
According to her order filed Monday morning, federal prosecutors and Trump’s defense lawyers must file motions in July and show up at her satellite courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Aug. 8.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees a person’s right to a speedy trial, a measure meant to protect against jailing someone indefinitely through Kafkaesque bureaucracy. In practice, defense lawyers like to spend several months reviewing documents to poke holes in a case and search for exculpatory evidence that would either disprove a prosecutor’s theory of the crime—or create reasonable doubt that it ever happened. Meanwhile, prosecutors use that time to further investigate and find additional witnesses.
But in setting a trial just two months away, Judge Cannon appears to be doing Trump a favor: making the decisive legal battle early enough that it would not disrupt Trump’s 2024 run for president, which is expected to heat up later this year.
