Aileen Cannon, a U.S. District Judge in New York City, postponed Trump’s trial for classified documents until further notice on Tuesday.
The Court determined that finalizing a trial date before resolution of the many interconnected and pending CIPA and pre-trial issues was necessary and imminent would be imprudent. It would also be inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fairly and fully consider the numerous pending motions for pre-trial proceedings, the critical CIPA questions, and the additional pretrial preparations and trial preparations needed to present this case in front of a jury,” wrote Judge Cannon.
The Court will therefore cancel the May 20, 2024 trial date and associated calendar call. This will be done by separate order after the Court has resolved the issues before it, following the right of defendants to due process, and the public interest in fair and just administration of justice.
The case of Special Counsel Jack Smith against Donald Trump, the former president, based on classified documents has been in doubt lately. Smith’s team confessed to Cannon on Friday that they had manipulated the evidence and misled him.
Cannon unveiled a cache of documents last month that revealed an FBI agent testified in court that the General Services Administration was in Virginia with Trump’s boxes before Trump’s team was ordered to retrieve them. The GSA was holding boxes that Trump’s team had to retrieve. These boxes contained markings that were classified, raising the question of whether the Biden Administration had set Trump up.
Julie Kelly, an independent journalist, noted that “an entire pallet of boxes held by GSA outside of DC was dumped at Mar-a-Lago.” “These were the boxes that contained papers with ‘classified marks’.”
This case may also be affected by the Supreme Court’s hearing of oral arguments on Trump’s claim to immunity as president.
Cannon’s ruling is a significant victory for President Trump who had repeatedly tried to delay the case till after the November presidential election. Cannon, in early April, rejected Trump’s earlier attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, which he had based on his argument that the documents discovered at Trump’s estate were personal records. Trump filed several motions to dismiss the case in February. He used various arguments such as asserting his presidential immunity and questioning Smith’s legitimacy.
Joe Biden, meanwhile, had stored classified information in boxes for years in his garage that he wasn’t allowed to do so. He was not charged. Robert Hur, Special Counsel, concluded in February that Biden had “willfully retained classified materials and disclosed them after his vice-presidency when he became a private citizen.” His actions “present[ed] a serious risk to national security” but Hur would not bring charges because Biden was “likely to present himself to the jury as a well-meaning elderly man with a bad memory as he presented himself during our interview.”
Hur concluded that it would be difficult to convince a juror that they should convict Biden for a serious crime that requires a state of mental willfulness. Hur also found that Biden had a “significantly reduced memory, both in his recorded interviews with a ghostwriter in 2017, and in his 2023 interview with our office,” and that he could not remember when he became vice president or the date his son Beau passed away.
