US District Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed former President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial on Tuesday, determining that further review of evidence was necessary to proceed. The delay, which follows multiple legal issues with the prosecution, likely pushes the trial until after the 2024 election in November, setting the stage for even more legal drama later in the year.
Last year, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, scheduled the trial to begin on May 20, 2024, striking a compromise between Trump’s attorneys, who wanted a date after the election, and Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was pushing for a date as early as December 2023. However, in her Tuesday ruling, Cannon wrote that both the defense and the prosecution had agreed that a delay was necessary.
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“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and [Classified Information Procedures Act] issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury,” she wrote in her decision.
Cannon did not set a new date for the trial.
This delay follows an earlier controversy surrounding the FBI’s handling of the classified documents at the center of the prosecution’s case. As Valuetainment previously reported, Smith admitted in court filings on Friday that the documents recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence had been rearranged by federal investigators, causing them to appear in a different order than what was recorded in the official scans.
This led to confusion in determining the origin of certain key pieces of classified evidence, which led to another delay.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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