Achi news desk-
WASHINGTON: The case against Donald Trump appeared relatively straightforward in August 2022 when FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago estate, with authorities citing evidence that the former president had hoarded plenty of documents distributed to fill dozens of boxes and has blocked the government’s efforts to retrieve them.
But nine months after he was indicted, there are growing doubts that the case can come to trial this year.
The Trump-appointed judge in the case has yet to set a firm trial date despite holding two hours of hearings with lawyers this month. Multiple motions to dismiss the case are still pending, disputes over classified evidence have spanned months and a fierce defense request to reveal the names of government witnesses remains unresolved. Further complicating matters is a recent order that suggests the judge, Aileen Cannon, is still entertaining the Trump team’s claim of rightful possession of the documents she had openly questioned days before.
“This seems to be moving more slowly and less sequentially than other cases I’ve seen” regarding classified information, said David Aaron, a former Justice Department national security prosecutor.
To some extent, the delay is a product of the Trump team’s broader strategy to delay the four criminal cases facing the presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s presidential race. But the case in Florida is unique because very few substantive decisions have been made to move closer to a trial. That raises the possibility that a decision in the case could be unlikely before this year’s presidential election. If he were to win the White House, Trump could appoint an attorney general who would dismiss the federal charges against him in Florida and other jurisdictions.
Prosecutors on the special counsel of Jack Smith’s team have fought hard to press the case forward. Although they have been careful not to mention the upcoming election, they have repeatedly cited the public interest in resolving the case quickly and have highlighted what they say is n overwhelming evidence – including surveillance video, defense lawyer notes and testimony at the end. associates – establish Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
“This case should be over already,” said Jeffrey Swartz, a professor at Cooley Law School and a former judge in Florida. “There was nothing that complicated in this case.”
That’s what distinguishes the classified documents case from the other – more legally complex – criminal cases against Trump, which involve everything from allegations of hush money paid to a porn actress to complex racketeering charges and her role while trying to overturn the 2020 election.
But defense lawyers see it differently, and Cannon – a former federal prosecutor appointed to the bench in 2020 who has limited trial experience as a judge – has been receptive to some of their arguments until now. age before the case was filed last June.
The judge first made headlines weeks after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago when, responding to Trump’s lawsuit seeking to recover the documents seized by the federal government, he appointed an independent arbitrator to sift through all the records. That appointment was overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel, which said Cannon had overstepped his bounds.
“My sense of it is that when it was overturned by the 11th Circuit that made it gun shy, so it’s gone very slowly” and issued “very few written, public decisions about important issues,” said John Fishwick, Jr. ., former US attorney for the Western District of Virginia.
Shortly after Trump was indicted, Cannon set the case for trial on May 20, 2024. But last fall he signaled that he would reconsider that date during a March 1 hearing. The hearing was held as was scheduled – but no replacement date was set, although both sides operating on the assumption that the May 20 date is moot have suggested the case could begin this summer.
That is not the only unsolved question. Defense lawyers have filed about half a dozen motions to dismiss the case, including on the grounds that the prosecution was vindictive and that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was illegal.
Cannon this month heard hours of arguments on two of the impeachment motions – whether Trump had a right under a statute called the Presidential Records Act to keep the classified documents after he left office and whether the Espionage Act law at the heart of the case then. vague as to be unconstitutional.
Cannon appeared skeptical of the defense’s claims and, after the hearing, issued a lengthy two-page order rejecting the ambiguity argument while allowing Trump to raise it again later.
She has yet to act on the Presidential Records Act proposal, but legal experts pointed to her direction last week for lawyers on both sides to weigh proposed jury instructions that appeared to be biased in Trump’s favor. He asked them to respond to a precedent that said in part: “A president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his presidency. No court or jury may make or review such a categorization decision.”
That wording was notable because it echoed arguments Trump’s lawyers have been making for months. They insist that the law allows him to designate the records he was accused of keeping as his own personal files. In contrast, Smith’s team says the law does not apply in a case involving the illegal possession of classified information, including nuclear secrets.
“It seems a little early in the game to be talking about jury instructions when significant legal questions have been raised that need to be resolved,” Aaron said, although he said ordering jury instructions could be a way to proceed forward. those questions resolved.
Besides the pending motions to dismiss, Cannon has yet to rule on a defense motion seeking to compel prosecutors to turn over a trove of information they demand would show that President Joe Biden’s administration “armed” the criminal justice system in bringing the Trump case.
That claim is in line with campaign trail claims by Trump and his allies that he is the victim of political persecution by Biden’s Justice Department. He has complained that he was charged when Biden, who was also investigated for keeping classified information – did not encourage Smith’s team to point out the vast differences in the investigations.
An even more contentious dispute involves a request by the defense to file a motion that would identify potential prosecution witnesses on the public docket. Cannon initially consented to the filing but suspended her order after prosecutors argued that such a disclosure could jeopardize the safety of witnesses.
“Maybe the judge is just afraid of making a mistake, but there’s a delay,” said Kevin McMunigal, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. “Eventually she’s going to have to make a decision about these.”
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – Associated Press)
