U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida avoided discussing when she intends to bring Donald Trump's case to trial for hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home, according to Politico. At a hearing to resolve key pretrial matters, Cannon didn’t offer a hint about her potential timing. Instead, the judge delved straight into a legal debate about whether Trump was sufficiently aware he could be prosecuted for his handling of the classified materials after he left the White House. That’s on a long list of issues the judge must resolve before a trial can begin. Cannon turned down, for now, Trump’s motion to toss out 32 of the 40 felony charges he faces in the case. Trump had argued in the motion that the law he’s accused of violating, the Espionage Act, is too vague to apply in these circumstances. The act makes it a crime to willfully retain sensitive national security information without permission.
The hearing took place as Cannon, a Trump appointee, is under intense scrutiny about when she intends to reschedule the trial, currently slated to begin May 20 but expected to be postponed until this summer or much later. Special counsel Jack Smith has asked for the trial to begin in early July, though Cannon has expressed doubts about whether that would leave enough time to resolve thorny legal matters. Trump has argued that the trial should not happen until after the November election but has floated an August date as a fallback. At the end of Thursday’s session, Cannon promised to rule “promptly” on the issues argued. Meanwhile, New York prosecutors said Thursday they are open to delaying Trump's hush-money trial by a month “in an abundance of caution” to give the former president’s lawyers time to review evidence they recently obtained from a previous federal investigation. The Manhattan district attorney said in a court filing that it does not oppose adjourning the trial for 30 days but would fight the defense push for a longer delay.