Judge Aileen Cannon has postponed “indefinitely” the trial against Donald Trump on the handling of classified documents scheduled for this month in Florida. The trial against the former US president was supposed to begin on May 20 in Miami but the judge ruled that there were “too many motions” to examine before starting and did not set another date. According to the tycoon’s lawyers, some of the documents found in the boxes at Mar-a-Lago are damaged compared to when FBI agents seized them two years ago. A few days ago, she reports the CNN, the legal team said moving documents inside other boxes could also be grounds for dismissing the case. They said they will file a motion to dismiss if the prosecution “fails to reliably demonstrate how it seized and handled key evidence in the case, which will be a central issue in any trial.” Not only that, already in the last few days Judge Cannon suspended the deadline that the defendants had for some pre-trial statements and said that there would be a subsequent order that reset the preliminary deadlines and hearings. Today the communication of postponement to a later date.
The admission: the documents are now in a different order
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s office acknowledged in a recent court filing that, at least in some of the boxes obtained in the Mar-a-Lago search, the documents are now in a different order than when the Justice Department took them. into custody for the first time. “President Trump and his attorneys are deeply troubled to learn these facts approximately 11 months after the filing of charges in this case,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their statement. The revelations from Smith’s office “raise questions about the investigation and handling of evidence that must be addressed before the matter proceeds.” Trump was accused of mishandling national defense information after the FBI seized boxes from his Florida estate in August 2022: classified documents mixed with other personal belongings of the former president. Prosecutors also acknowledged the discrepancy in response to a request last week from Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta, to push back some pretrial deadlines. Today the decision, in a process that risks never starting.
