Some legal and national security experts were stunned when attorneys for Donald Trump filed a near-midnight motion requesting U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely delay setting a date for his trial in the classified documents case.
At 11:30 PM, just 30 minutes before the deadline, Trump’s attorneys told Judge Cannon, “there is most assuredly no reason for any expedited trial, and the ends of justice are best served by a continuance.”
Technically, Trump’s legal team of four attorneys are asking Cannon to deny the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s trial schedule, and withdraw her own schedule which includes pre-trial conference dates during which attorneys and the judge discuss critical details of the case.
In their overnight filing, Trump’s attorneys suggest that the trial is political, but also, because he is running for elected office against the sitting President of the United States, he is far too busy to deal with being a defendant.
“President Trump is running for president of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee,” the motion reads. “This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on Nov. 5, 2024.”
Pointing to Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta, they add: “Mr. Nauta’s job requires him to accompany President Trump during most campaign trips around the country. This schedule makes trial preparation with both of the Defendants challenging. Such preparation requires significant planning and time, making the current schedule untenable and counseling in favor of a continuance.”
They claim it will be difficult, and time-consuming, to seat an impartial jury, especially because of the presidential election.
The attorneys write, “even Department of Justice policy cautions against taking prosecutorial action for the purpose of affecting an election or helping a candidate or party.”
Donald Trump, it has been widely reported, announced he was running for president because he thought it would prevent him from being prosecuted. And The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, as recently as today, wrote: “Lawyers for Trump, whose advisers are blunt in private that they see winning the election is the key to making the case against him disappear, began the process of delaying the documents trial.”
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The New York Times, in that article co-authored by Haberman, adds that Trump’s “lawyers strongly hinted that they were going to fight the government during the pretrial litigation over classified material, a process that could take up significant amounts of time.”
“In general,” the lawyers’ motion reads, “the defendants believe there should simply be no ‘secret’ evidence, nor any facts concealed from public view relative to the prosecution of a leading presidential candidate by his political opponent.”
“Our democracy demands no less than full transparency,” they claim.
Trump’s attorneys also suggest they intend “to challenge some of the charges he is facing by arguing that the Presidential Records Act permitted Mr. Trump to take documents with him from the White House,” The Times reports. They also “suggested that they might raise ‘constitutional and statutory challenges’ to Mr. Smith’s authority as special counsel.”
In response to the news Trump is trying to delay the trial, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, who is generally reserved in her commentary, overnight tweeted: “Shocker. Trump doesn’t want to ever go to trial.”
Brad Moss, a top national security attorney, was even less reserved in his response to the news. He tweeted, “Criminal defendants in court today: Apologies, Your Honor, but I am far too busy to be prosecuted right now. I’m going to have to ask you to indefinitely postpone my trial.”
But Barb McQuade, also a former U.S. Attorney, appeared to have anticipated this move.
“To no one’s surprise, Trump’s lawyers filed a brief late last night in documents case seeking delay in trial date,” she wrote Tuesday morning. “Judge Cannon has a lot of power here to keep the trial on track. What’s the over/under for a trial before the Nov 2024 election?”
“While the arguments that Trump makes are not only anathema to the Constitution,” Adam Cohen, vice chair of Lawyers for Good Government notes, “And also contrary to his ‘lock her up’ chants in 2016…Remember-he makes this motion to Judge Cannon…Who previously decided Trump should be held to a different standard than the rest of America.”
Meanwhile, Marcy Wheeler, a national security and civil liberties journalist, suggests Trump’s attorneys are attempting to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.
“Trump literally got access to the docs he stole by stating, over and over, that there was no more important thing than protecting classified information. He promised voters he’d keep them safe. That’s how he won,” she reminds.
Pointing to the indictment, she adds:
Wheeler, in her Twitter thread, also heavily criticized The New York Times’ reporting, and issued a warning to journalists: “You don’t have to just repeat Trump’s claims about how an election prevents him from going to trial w/o noting that he GOT ELECTED in 2016 by insisting on the urgency of criminal prosecution for mishandling classified information.”
Read the tweets above or at this link.
Image: Hunter Crenian/Shutterstock