Former U.S. President Donald Trump
| Photo Credit: AP

The federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of former President Donald Trump has canceled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.

The order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had been expected in light of still-unresolved issues in the case and because Mr. Trump is currently on trial in a separate case in Manhattan charging him in connection with hush money payments during the 2016 presidential election. The New York case involves several of the same lawyers representing him in the federal case in Florida.

Mr. Cannon said in a five-page order Tuesday that it would be “imprudent” to finalize a new trial date now, casting further doubt on federal prosecutors’ ability to bring Trump to trial before the November presidential election.

Mr. Trump faces dozens of felony counts accusing him of illegally hoarding at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida classified documents that he took with him after he left the White House in 2021, and then obstructing the FBI’s efforts to get them back. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

Mr. Trump faces four criminal cases as he seeks to reclaim the White House, but outside of the New York prosecution, it’s not clear that any of the other three will reach trial before the election.

The Supreme Court is weighing Mr. Trump’s arguments that he is immune from federal prosecution in a separate case from special counsel Jack Smith charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia have also brought a separate case related to election subversion, though it’s not clear when that might reach trial.

Miami, United States:

A Florida judge on Tuesday indefinitely postponed Donald Trump’s criminal trial over his alleged mishandling of classified documents, making it unlikely the case will be heard before the November presidential election.

The former president had been scheduled to go on trial on May 20 but District Judge Aileen Cannon said that was not possible because of the number of pre-trial motions before the court.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, did not set a new date for the start of the federal trial.

The postponement is a major setback for special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, and makes it unlikely the case will be heard before the  election now less than six months away, in which Trump is the Republican presumptive nominee for president.

Trump’s attorneys have sought to delay his various criminal cases until after the election, when the 77-year-old Trump could potentially have the federal charges against him dropped if he wins.

Trump is currently on trial in New York on state charges of falsifying business records to pay hush money to a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump pleaded not guilty in Florida last June to the federal charges of unlawfully retaining national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements.

He kept the classified files — which included records from the Pentagon, CIA and National Security Agency — unsecured at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and thwarted official efforts to retrieve them, according to the indictment.

Cannon, in her order, said the sheer number of pre-trial motions and the classified nature of some of the evidence in the case made it impossible to stick to the May trial date.

“The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024 trial date,” she said.

A new date would be “reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with the Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice,” Cannon said.

In addition to the New York and Florida cases, Trump has also been charged in Washington and Georgia with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, his likely November opponent.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. chided the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida, warning her off potential jury instructions that they said rest on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”

In an unusual order, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had asked prosecutors and defence lawyers to file proposed jury instructions for most of the charges even though it remains unclear when the case might reach trial. She asked the lawyers to respond to competing interpretations of the law that appeared to accept the Republican ex-President’s argument that he was entitled under a statute known as the Presidential Records Act to retain the sensitive documents he is now charged with possessing.

Alarming order

The order surprised legal experts and alarmed special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which said in a filing late on Tuesday that the 1978 law — which requires Presidents to return presidential records to the government upon leaving office but permits them to retain purely personal ones — has no relevance in a case concerning highly classified documents.

Those records, prosecutors said, were clearly not personal and there is no evidence Mr. Trump ever designated them as such.

Mr. Smith’s team said that if the judge insists on citing the presidential records law in her jury instructions, she should let the lawyers know as soon as possible so they can appeal.