The federal judge overseeing the Justice Department prosecution of former President Donald Trump on charges related to his mishandling of national security information and obstruction of justice has set a preliminary trial date for mid-August.
Judge Aileen Cannon for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Tuesday issued an order scheduling Trump’s trial to begin on Aug. 14, though Trump’s team is expected to file a number of motions seeking to delay the proceedings on various grounds.
The order also leaves open the possibility of continuances based on the complexity of the case and issues around classified documents and security clearances.
Cannon’s order requires pre-trial motions to be filed in just over a month, on July 24.
That deadline could prove tricky for Trump to meet as he continues to scramble to assemble a legal team to defend him.
Trump’s current lawyers also reportedly do not yet have security clearance to view the classified documents at the center of the case.
Cannon’s order is her first major action since Trump was arraigned last week on 37 felony counts.
Cannon has faced calls for her recusal because of Trump-friendly rulings she previously made in the investigation of the documents, which were later forcefully struck down by a federal appeals court.
She has so far resisted those calls, and Tuesday’s order is the latest sign that she has no intention of stepping away from the case.
Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this month on charges that include willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, a scheme to conceal and making false statements.
According to prosecutors, Trump held on to a cache of incredibly sensitive, classified national security materials after leaving office; stored them in areas accessible to the public; refused to turn the documents back over to the government; hatched and executed a plan to hide documents from his lawyers and the government in defiance of a federal subpoena; and, in two separate incidents, knowingly showed classified documents to people who did not have clearance to see such information.
Trump’s legal team is expected to challenge several aspects of the indictment before a trial gets underway, including an order from a federal judge that allowed prosecutors to pierce attorney-client privilege and question Trump’s ex-attorney Evan Corcoran.
His notes are central in the evidence presented in the indictment.
The complexity of the case and the classified materials at the heart of it also mean that the Justice Department and the other parties in the Trump will have to come to an agreement about how to present classified evidence at trial – another process that could push back the start of the trial.
Trump is the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. A conviction on the charges, which could include prison time, could upend that race.
But should Trump win the GOP nomination and then the general election – and if his team is also able to delay the trial until after the election – Trump could then install a friendly attorney general that could effectively dismiss the case.