Oct. 5 (UPI) — Attorneys for former President Donald Trump on Thursday filed a request to delay his classified documents trial until after the 2024 presidential election.
The Florida legal filing requests that the trial, currently set to begin on May 20, be postponed until “at least mid-November 2024.”
“The demands of the Special Counsel’s Office must give way to the constitutional rights of the defendants and the interests of judicial economy,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
Trump’s lawyers accused Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office of failing to turn over some of the basic discovery documents in the case and “clinging to an unprecedented and now untenable” schedule.
“Given the current schedule, we cannot understate the prejudice to President Trump arising from his lack of access to these critical materials months after they should have been produced,” the legal filing said. “For example, it is difficult to meaningfully review portions of the classified interviews stored in the temporary Miami SCIF that relate to documents that are not located in the District.”
Their argument is that the classified government documents Trump is accused of criminally possessing and refused to return to the U.S. government are so confidential and sensitive that they need to be reviewed under strict supervision in Washington.
Their legal motion argued that the Special Counsel’s Office “has not made available adequate facilities for the motions it plans to file and related hearings, or disclosed to President Trump all of the materials to which he is entitled, in a case that is destined for additional untimely disclosures in light of the fact that the Office did not even include the classification reviews in its initial classified productions.”
Judge Aileen Cannon set the May 20 date, defying requests by prosecutors to delay the original start date of this August until December, and earlier efforts by Trump’s camp to halt the proceeding until after the 2024 election.
Trump’s lawyers had previously argued that he deserves special consideration rather than being treated equally under the law, as a former president and 2024 candidate.
The new filing also complained that the trial date conflicted with the March 4 date of the trial accusing him of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that is set to be heard in Washington.
Attorneys for Trump said the trial dates would require them and Trump “to be in two places at once.”
