Mar-a-Lago classified documents case: Trump attorneys ask judge again to delay trial – Palm Beach Post
FORT PIERCE — Lawyers for Donald Trump and the men accused of helping him conceal boxes of classified documents are reviving their bid to have the Mar-a-Lago trial delayed a second time.
During a hearing in Fort Pierce on Wednesday, attorneys described the sluggish pace at which they’ve begun to review more than 1.3 million pages of documents and several years’ worth of CCTV videos in preparation for its anticipated May 20 trial date.
They said technical difficulties and belated access to classified material have turned an already aggressive schedule into a near-impossible one.
All of it, they said, is compounded by the colliding schedules of three other criminal cases facing Trump: the election subversion case in Georgia; one in New York involving allegations of falsifying business records; and the election interference case in Washington, D.C.
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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon held Wednesday’s hearing to decide whether the ongoing issues warranted an adjustment to the schedule. Trump attorney Todd Blanche told Cannon that unless she pushes the trial back, it may conflict with the D.C. case, which is set to go to trial on March 4.
Cannon denied the attorneys’ request for an indefinite delay once before, unconvinced then that the discovery was too voluminous for the defense team to tackle within the confines of the May 20 schedule. Jay Bratt, a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, argued Wednesday that “nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed,” Blanche said.
The former president’s attorney said the subsequent indictments “completely disrupted” the schedule Cannon set forth in July, blaming Jack Smith’s special counsel for throwing the plans in flux. Bratt cautioned Cannon against letting other judges’ timelines dictate her own and urged her to stick to the schedule already established.
Cannon did not immediately decide whether she would. She adjourned the hearing, which neither Trump nor his codefendants Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira attended, and promised to rule on the issue soon.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.