Former President Donald Trump has asked U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to grant a delay in the classified documents case against him.
In a four-page motion filed on Monday, Trump's attorneys said they needed more time to submit documents to the court. Court watchers blamed Cannon's "slow pace" for opening the door to additional delays.
"President Donald J. Trump respectfully submits this motion, on behalf of all of the Defendants, for an extension of the deadlines for filing certain reply submissions in support of pending pretrial motions," the motion said. "The Special Counsel's Office opposes this request."
Trump's attorneys said they did not have time to finish court submission because they had to travel to the Fort Pierce courthouse for a March 14 hearing.
"President Trump and counsel need to spend time preparing for the oral argument, which is time we would otherwise use to prepare the other reply submissions," the filing stated.
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The document also noted that Trump is being tried in New York "and the need to simultaneously devote attention to that case and this matter has been necessitated in part by the discovery violations and strategic scheduling demands of the Special Counsel's Office that have prejudiced President Trump in multiple respects."
"The Defendants have no intention of causing unnecessary delay in these proceedings," the attorneys insisted. "[W]e respectfully submit that no actual delay or prejudice to the Office would result from the extensions we are seeking. Accordingly, the Defendants respectfully request an extension, until March 24, 2024, to file reply submissions in support of pretrial motions other than those relating to the Presidential Records Act and the Espionage Act."
New York Times legal correspondent Alan Feuer blamed Cannon's "slow pace" for the potential delay.
"Judge Cannon's slow pace in resolving the many pending motions in the Trump classified docs case has created a backlog that Trump's lawyers have now used as a reason to request further delays in filing reply briefs on their motions to dismiss," he wrote on X.
