Former President Donald Trump's filing seeking to delay his trial in the Mar-a-Lago documents case poses the first big test of whether Judge Aileen Cannon will display any undue favoritism to the ex-president, legal experts say.
The former president's legal team this week submitted a filing asking to indefinitely delay the trial to Cannon, a Trump appointee who repeatedly ruled in his favor during an earlier court fight over whether investigators can access the classified documents seized during the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago before she was overruled by an appeals court.
Trump's lawyers asked Cannon to reject the Justice Department's proposed December trial date and postpone it indefinitely, citing his presidential campaign.
"President Trump is running for president of the United States and is currently the likely Republican Party nominee. This undertaking requires a tremendous amount of time and energy, and that effort will continue until the election on November 5, 2024," Trump lawyers Chris Kise and Todd Blanche wrote in the filing.
"Proceeding to trial during the pendency of a presidential election cycle wherein opposing candidates are effectively (if not literally) directly adverse to one another in this action will create extraordinary challenges in the jury selection process and limit the defendant's ability to secure a fair and impartial adjudication," the filing said.
The attorneys cited the hundreds of thousands of pages of records the DOJ produced in discovery as well as hours of raw surveillance footage while also claiming that the case is a "prosecution of a leading presidential candidate by his political opponent."
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller's team, questioned Trump's motive behind the filing.
"If you are innocent and want to be vindicated, you ask for a trial before the election," he tweeted. "If you are guilty and want to run on victimization, without being undermined by facts and law, you don't."
The New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported that Trump's lawyers are "blunt in private that they see winning the election" as "the key to making the case against him disappear."
"The speedy trial right lies with the accused, who in this case is explicit that he doesn't want one," Haberman tweeted.
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National security attorney Mark Zaid wrote that the filing suggests that Trump's lawyers believe the "only way Trump will be legally safe is if he can win re-election & make these federal charges go away as president (or pardoned by another GOP president)."
Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks called the request "meritless."
"Trump motion for delay is based on politics, not law," she tweeted. "It is totally wrong in saying such a trial cannot start in 6 months [from] indictment. My team's #Watergate trial started 6 months after indictment, and that included our going to SCOTUS during that time and Nixon resigning."
Longtime Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe noted that the filing is also "the first big test of whether Judge Cannon is basically working for the defense — or is trying to do justice and vindicate the rule of law."
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman agreed that "nobody, including DOJ, expects a trial" in December but "that doesn't justify team Trump's gambit of not even offering" a timeline.
"That's something in response to which Cannon should display a very firm hand. As I say, the first very telling moment for her of the case," he wrote.
"This is a very telling moment for Judge Cannon, and she has an obvious move. One party has submitted a schedule; the other hasn't. She should just adopt the one schedule that is in front of her. There's no halfway point to choose, which is part of [Trump's] brazen strategy," he added.
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, who served as Democratic counsel during Trump's first impeachment, argued that Trump's request seeking an indefinite delay is "contrary to law."
"It's also a major test for Judge Cannon—who previously showed unfounded favoritism to him," he wrote. "If she missteps again, expect major recusal litigation in her court & 11th Circuit."
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