A Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s prosecution on criminal charges related to his handling of classified documents declined Trump’s request to delay the trial until after the 2024 presidential election.
Judge Aileen M. Cannon said in her order that the trial will begin on May 20, 2024. By that point in time, nearly all the voting in the Republican Party’s presidential primary and caucuses will be over.
Cannon’s decision to push the trial back by several months takes a middle-of-the-road approach between what prosecutors and the defense had requested.
Special Counsel Jack Smith had sought for the trial to begin in December 2023 — before any votes were cast in the presidential primaries and caucuses — while Trump had pushed for the trial to be delayed until after the presidential election on November 5, 2024.
The New York Times reported that the jurors will be selected from a handful of counties that Trump “won handily” in the last two presidential elections.
David Harbach, who serves as one of Smith’s top deputies and who led the 2012 case against former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), said earlier this week that Trump should be treated just like every other U.S. citizen in the case.
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“Mr. Trump is not the president,” Harbach said. “He is a private citizen who has been lawfully indicted by a grand jury in this district and his case should be guided by the federal code and the rules of this court like anyone else.”
Trump’s team pushed back strongly against that assertion, telling Cannon that it was “intellectually dishonest to stand up in front of this court and say this case is like any other.”
Cannon said in her order that she did not need to rule right now on the argument from Trump’s team that “publicity about the 2024 Presidential Election” will make it impossible to seat an impartial grand jury.