Florida judge wants Trump trial to start in mid-August
A federal judge in Florida ordered the jury trial in former President Donald Trump’s trial for alleged mishandling of classified material to begin Aug. 14.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a federal judge in South Florida nominated by Trump, set the ambitious schedule, ordering pretrial motions to be filed by July 24. Those motions could delay the start of the trial well beyond August. But the speed of Cannon’s proposed timetable could complicate efforts by Trump’s legal team to delay the process with extensive pretrial litigation.
Cannon has come under scrutiny for his past decisions related to the federal investigation into the president’s handling of documents at his Mar-a-Lago mansion, raising questions among legal experts about whether he had expressed favoritism toward Trump from the bench.
The trial was to be held in federal court in Fort Pierce, about 70 miles north of West Palm Beach.
Trump faces 37 felony counts of mishandling and unlawful retention of secret material, including some of the U.S. government’s most sensitive secrets, such as details about the U.S. nuclear arsenal, attack plans against U.S. adversaries and vulnerabilities to U.S. national security.