Donald Trump is once again asking a federal judge to delay the trial over his alleged mishandling of classified documents until after the 2024 presidential election—but, if he must, he can stomach an Aug. 12 start date.
The surprise admission by the former president’s lawyers comes as a response to a request by special counsel Jack Smith’s office to start the trial on July 8. The dueling proposals were filed Thursday evening ahead of a Friday hearing by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Fort Pierce, Florida, where she is widely expected to wipe the previously slated May 20 start date off the schedule.
That said, Trump’s attorneys spent the vast majority of their 8-page filing arguing that the former president could not possibly be expected to get a fair trial this calendar year, given his status “as the presumptive Republican nominee and President Biden’s chief political rival.”
Cramming all of the necessary proceedings in Trump’s four discrete criminal cases into his packed schedule has proved to be a steadily compounding headache, especially as he fights tooth and nail to have them tossed out. He has denied wrongdoing in all four cases.
Also set for Friday, as Cannon reconsiders the Florida schedule, is a hearing in Fulton County, Georgia, where charges that Trump interfered in the 2020 presidential election there have been waylaid by accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. A start date in his Georgia trial has not yet been set.
As Trump continues to push for dismissal, one of his team’s primary arguments has been that he is immune from prosecution for allegedly illegal actions he took while in office. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear oral arguments on the matter in late April, a timeline that will undoubtedly bump his D.C. election interference case back to a late summer start.
Meanwhile, the only start date currently set in stone—at least for now—is March 25, when Trump will face trial in New York on 34 charges that he falsified business records in connection with a hush money payment with adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
