Judge Cannon Sets Trump Docs Case For May Trial Date

This morning Judge Aileen Cannon set a May 20, 2024 trial date in Donald Trump's documents case.

In the scheduling order, she continued her recent practice of being ... basically normal! This is a stark contrast to the last time this case was before her, when her shenanigans earned her an epic slapdown from the Eleventh Circuit.

On Tuesday, Cannon held a hearing pursuant to Section 2 of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) at which the parties argued their proposed dates for trial. Prosecutors asked to present their case to the jury on December 11, 2023. Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta countered that the court should hold it never, or at least that the Judge Cannon should take it off the calendar indefinitely while the parties fight over classified evidence.

When pressed, Trump's lawyers proposed that the court set a trial date in the second half of November 2024, i.e. after the presidential election. Judge Cannon made it clear that this would not be happening and shrugged off the suggestion that it would be impossible to seat an impartial jury during the election. This was perhaps more an argument made for the purpose of delay than out of actual concern, since the trial will be held in Fort Pierce, Florida, drawing a jury pool from a highly Republican area of the state.

"As a preliminary matter, the Court rejects Defendants' request to withhold setting of a schedule now," she wrote in today's order. But noting the voluminous discovery in this case, much of it classified, she also called the DOJ's proposed December date "atypically accelerated and inconsistent with ensuring a fair trial." She refrained from her prior practice of talking about the unique position of a former president, while making snide comments about the reliability of any government assertion.

It's long been the Justice Department's policy to refrain from "overt investigative steps" close to an election. This has generally been interpreted as imposing a 90-day blackout period before election day, and indeed Jack Smith has made it clear that he hopes to depoliticize the process by completing it long before the election. But several states will not have held their primaries by the May 20, 2024 trial date: Kentucky and Oregon hold their nominating contests on May 21, with DC, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota slated for June 4. If Trump is convicted after the majority of states have held their primaries, it's going to make for a wild RNC convention in Millwaukee on July 15.

And still we wait for that indictment out of DC ...

US v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.