Judge holds first hearing since delaying Trump’s classified documents trial, criticizing special counsel

Like the Manhattan case against secret money Donald Trump nearing its conclusion, a new phase of pretrial activity begins Wednesday in the federal classified documents prosecution the former president faces in Florida.

U.S. District Judge Canon Aileen will hear arguments from defense attorneys on two separate bids to dismiss charges in the case. In the first motion, Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet and co-defendant, claims he is being vindictively prosecuted, and in the second, Trump and his co-defendants argue that the indictment suffers from technical flaws requiring his rejection.

Trump is accused by special counsel Jack Smith of taking classified national defense documents to the White House after leaving office and resisting government attempts to retrieve those documents. Trump, Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira have all pleaded not guilty.

Trump got permission from the judge to skip Wednesday’s proceeding, which will begin at 10 a.m. ET at the courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida.

This hearing is the first before the judge since she indefinitely delayed the start of the trial, which was to begin this week. It’s been more than a month since the judge held an in-person public hearing in the case — although she has held at least one secret proceeding since then.

In postponing the trial, Cannon pointed to the mountain of unresolved issues before the trial for not having a new date set on the calendar. Wednesday begins a series of hearings scheduled through the end of July that will allow the case to resolve some — but not all — of the pretrial issues.

Cannon’s slow pace in the case drew criticism from outside legal experts, who accused the Trump-appointed judge of playing into the delaying tactics of the presumptive Republican Party White House nominee. Unless Cannon significantly accelerates his momentum, it seems unlikely that the charges will be brought before a jury before the 2024 election. If Trump wins the White House, he is expected to make the charges go away brought against him.

Newly unsealed documents provide more details about the investigation

Until recent days, several of Trump’s major motions attacking the prosecution were not even publicly on the record. The proceedings have become mired in disputes over what should be redacted from public records.

On Tuesday, hundreds of pages of previously sealed court documents were publicly released as part of the former president’s efforts to have the charges against him dropped. Those documents included a ruling issued under seal in March 2023 by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., finding that there was “sufficient” evidence that Trump had committed crimes, allowing investigators to obtain information from his former lawyer that would normally be protected by attorney-client privilege.

Trump seeks to dismiss this evidence, as well as evidence obtained during the FBI’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, from which investigators obtained numerous documents underlying several of the charges against Trump.

Those motions are not scheduled to be debated Wednesday and Cannon has not yet scheduled a hearing on them.

In her order Sunday authorizing the release of the documents, Cannon took shots at prosecutors — one of several jabs she has taken at Smith’s office. She said she was “concerned” that the special prosecutor’s office had requested the redaction of information contained in the newly disclosed documents after previously agreeing to have the information released in its entirety in previous court documents.

“The Court is disappointed by these developments. The sealing and redaction rules must be applied consistently and fairly based on sufficient factual and legal evidence,” Cannon wrote. “And parties should not make requests that undermine prior representations or positions, except after full disclosure to the court and after appropriate briefing.”

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