Judge Aileen Cannon, shown on the left (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida), and special counsel Jack Smith, shown on the right (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
It already seemed that the The trial date of May 20 set last July in the Mar-a-Lago case was uncertain and likely to be changed. A recent order on Monday delayed a crucial deadline for the prosecution, which the special counsel referred to as vital for taking the case to trial against Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order giving Trump more time to meet the deadlines related to the use of classified materials obtained through discovery and the disclosure of expert witnesses. The exact length of the extension was not mentioned in the order. The defense needs to provide a detailed account of its plans to use classified info at trial to avoid restrictions.forbiddenThe DOJ’s Justice Manual refers to the CIPA § 5(a) Notice as a law designed to safeguard classified information during a criminal proceeding, such as the Espionage Act case against Trump.
The DOJ’s Justice Manual calls the CIPA § 5(a) Notice the “linchpin” of the Classified Information Procedures Act, a statute designed to protect classified information over the course of a criminal proceeding, such as the Espionage Act case against Trump. The defense had argued in April that the May 9 deadline should be postponed because it was a challenging task for Trump attorneys to handle the Manhattan hush-money trial and file the notice simultaneously.
The defense had argued in April that the May 9 deadline should be moved because it was a “virtually impossible task” for Trump attorneys to fight the Manhattan hush-money trial and file the notice at the same time, special counsel Jack Smith told the judge that the defense “must stop” pushing “reflexively” for “open-ended” delay, especially when considering that Trump lawyers had months to meet the deadlines that are “crucial” for “getting the case to trial.
More recently, the defense pushed back by saying that Smith and his prosecutors have “incessantly sought deadlines” at breakneck speed.
Earlier on Monday, however, the Trump team said that deadlines should be adjourned because the Special Counsel’s Office “failed to maintain the integrity of the contents of certain boxes obtained at Mar-a-Lago.” The defense pointed to the Special Counsel’s Office own admissions to Cannon.
“[T]here are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the special counsel said, before explaining in a footnote: “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the court” on whether the boxes at issue were “in their original, intact form as seized.” The special counsel had told Cannon that the boxes “are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents.”
For the defense, this admission was fatal to Smith’s push to keep the deadlines in place. Trump lawyers asked: How can we be forced to “specify” classified discovery to be used at trial when prosecutors can’t be “trusted to maintain existing evidence”?
“While examining the evidence and preparing legal motions before the trial, President Trump’s legal team used the scans and thought that the position of supposed secret documents in the boxes would prove his innocence,” the defense said. said“We believed that most, if not all, of the documents being used as evidence were inside the boxes and placed alongside other items that supported the context, including when the document was put in a box. We never thought, until last Friday, that the prosecution team would fail to maintain the integrity of the evidence despite having ample resources,” the defense added.
After that, the judge temporarily halted the proceedings without going into details:
PAPERLESS ORDER temporarily staying CIPA § 5 and Rule 16 Expert Disclosure Deadlines 439. Order setting second set of pretrial deadlines/hearings to follow. Signed by Judge Aileen M. Cannon on 5/6/2024. (jf01) (Entered: 05/06/2024)