As the Manhattan hush money case against Donald Trump approaches its conclusion, a new phase of pretrial activity begins Wednesday in the federal classified documents case the former president is facing in Florida.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon, whose actions have increasingly raised concerns about her apparent bias in favor of Trump, will hear arguments from defense attorneys on two separate motions to dismiss charges in the case. In the first motion, Trump’s valet and co-defendant Walt Nauta alleges vindictive prosecution, while in the second, Trump and his co-defendants argue that the indictment has technical flaws requiring dismissal.
Trump is accused by special counsel Jack Smith of taking classified national defense documents from the White House after he left office and of resisting government attempts to retrieve the materials. Trump, Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira have all pleaded not guilty.
Trump has been granted permission by the judge to skip Wednesday’s proceedings, which will start at 10 a.m. ET in the Fort Pierce, Florida, courthouse.
This hearing is the first before Judge Cannon since she indefinitely delayed the start of the trial, which had been scheduled to begin this week. It has been more than a month since she last held a public, in-person hearing in the case, although she has held at least one sealed proceeding since then.
When postponing the trial, Cannon cited numerous unresolved pretrial issues as the reason for not setting a new date. Wednesday’s hearing kicks off a series of sessions scheduled through late July that will address some, but not all, pretrial matters.
Cannon’s slow pace has drawn criticism from legal experts, who accuse the Trump-appointed judge of enabling delay tactics by the GOP’s presumptive White House nominee. Unless Cannon significantly accelerates the proceedings, it seems unlikely the charges will go before a jury before the 2024 election. If Trump wins the White House, he is expected to dismiss the charges against him.
Until recently, several major motions from Trump attacking the prosecution were not publicly docketed. The proceedings have become bogged down in disputes over what should be redacted in public filings.
On Tuesday, hundreds of pages of previously sealed court filings were posted publicly as part of efforts by the former president to dismiss the charges against him. These filings included a previously sealed March 2023 ruling by a federal judge in Washington, DC, finding there was “sufficient” evidence that Trump committed crimes, allowing investigators to obtain information from his former lawyer that would normally be protected by attorney-client privilege.
Trump is seeking to exclude that evidence, as well as the evidence obtained in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, which yielded many of the documents underlying several charges against him.
Those motions are not scheduled for argument on Wednesday, and Cannon has not yet set a hearing on them.
In her order Sunday allowing for the filings to be made public, Cannon criticized prosecutors, expressing “concern” that the special counsel’s office sought redactions in the newly unsealed filings after previously agreeing to publish that information in full in earlier court filings.
“The Court is disappointed in these developments. The sealing and redaction rules should be applied consistently and fairly upon a sufficient factual and legal showing,” Cannon wrote. “And parties should not make requests that undermine any prior representations or positions except upon full disclosure to the Court and appropriate briefing.”
