Judge Aileen Cannon has indefinitely postponed the trial date in the case involving former President Donald Trump's classified documents in Florida.
"The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture -- before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming -- would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury," Cannon wrote Tuesday.
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"The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice," Cannon wrote.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, has expressed her dissatisfaction with Special Counsel Jack Smith’s arguments. While granting Smith’s request to redact witness names, Cannon criticized him for his failures and lack of adequate legal support.
Cannon’s criticism primarily focuses on Smith’s alleged failure to provide sufficient reasons for protecting the names of government witnesses from public view. In her ruling on April 9, Cannon pointed out Smith’s shortcomings multiple times, highlighting his failure to offer a governing legal framework or factual support for the relief sought.
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Furthermore, Cannon also criticized Smith’s alleged non-compliance with the rules on sealing sensitive court filings. She emphasized that Smith failed to comply with the district’s local rules on sealing, an issue she has repeatedly discussed throughout the proceedings.
“The Special Counsel had two opportunities to raise these arguments and failed to do so in both instances. The Special Counsel’s initial Seal Request failed to offer a governing legal framework or any factual support for the relief sought,” Cannon wrote.
“Later, in response to the Press Coalition’s Motion, the Special Counsel failed to engage with—let alone refute—the Press Coalition’s argument that the First Amendment attached to the subject materials.”
“And this is to say nothing of the Special Counsel’s failure to comply with this District’s Local Rules on sealing, which the Court has emphasized repeatedly throughout this proceeding,” Cannon wrote.
Recent reporting on former President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of the classified documents raised the question of whether the Biden administration set up the former president.
The conservative outlet PJ Media reported in April about a new development in the case after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case of Trump’s alleged stashing of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago estate, unsealed documents that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith wanted to remain secret.
The documents released by Cannon include a transcript of an interview that Trump’s legal team conducted with an FBI agent.
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The agent confirmed that the General Services Administration (GSA) is holding an entire pallet of Trump’s materials at a location in Virginia, where Trump left office in January 2021.
The GSA reportedly told Trump’s team to get the materials. But apparently they didn’t. So the agency shipped them to Mar-a-Lago.
Conservative investigative journalist Jullie Kelly posted on X, “Apparently these are the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings.'”
In response to Kelly, Tom Fitton of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch posted, “It was a set-up from the get-go.”
The upshot, as PJ Media reported, “So, it appears that the Biden administration may have been responsible for shipping classified information to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.”
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“This development is significant because Trump has previously blamed the GSA for packing the boxes that contained the classified documents, only to later accuse Trump of essentially stealing them and using that as pretext for sending the FBI to raid his Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022,” PJ Media continued.
“If the GSA had been in possession of the boxes, why wasn’t a review of the materials conducted before they instructed Trump’s team to get them? When it comes to classified information, they wouldn’t have expected Trump and his staff to be responsible for ensuring that classified documents weren’t among the records. Perhaps they did review the contents of the boxes and knew classified documents were contained in them before they told Trump’s people to come get them.”
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