FORT PIERCE, Florida — During a two-hour hearing Friday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon gave no indication when she’d set a new trial date for former President Donald Trump in his classified documents case.
Cannon previously implied that she is inclined to postpone the impending trial date of May 20, but on Friday made no concrete statements about an alternative timeline, prolonging the crucial issue yet again.
Special counsel Jack Smith has urged her to move the trial date to July 8, while Trump’s lawyers have said they prefer the trial to be set after the November election, but have also offered a fallback proposal to start it in August.
The hearing took place just days before Trump’s first criminal trial is set to start in New York City. The former president and his top attorneys did not attend the hearing in Fort Pierce. Instead, Trump attended a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Speaker Mike Johnson.
Trump says he’ll testify at hush money trial: ‘I tell the truth’Share
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.633.0_en.html#goog_2099517594Play Video
Cannon also heard arguments from the defense about providing additional details about the charges against Trump’s two co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, but she did not indicate whether she would grant that to them.
The judge did, however, tell Nauta’s attorney, Stanley Woodward, to move forward with his petition to unseal the transcripts of Nauta’s grand jury testimony. Both the defense and the prosecution agreed not to dispute the unsealing, as long as witness names other than Nauta’s remained redacted.
Cannon said she was baffled by what she said was the special counsel’s recent willingness to release some records, after earlier objecting to making them public.
“That came as somewhat of a surprise,” she said.
The judge asked prosecutor Jay Bratt to point to what precedent would approve such an unsealing of a secret grand jury proceeding, implying similar protections for the transcript. He said there may not be an order addressing it. After the exchange, however, neither the defense or prosecution pursued the issue.
Regardless, Cannon did not appear pleased with the opaqueness of the government’s process for deciding what information it is willing to unseal.
“It’s very ambiguous what is going on in the background and how these permissions are being granted,” she said.
