Judge Cannon Gives Trump’s Legal Team Even More Power to Delay Trial

On Feb 20, Trump’s lawyers in the classified documents case in Florida asked Judge Aileen Cannon to let them file at least ten motions in a single, combined document. She refused, instead ordering them to submit each motion individually, which could cause even more delays — adding fuel to criticisms Cannon is attempting to help Trump prevent the trial from concluding before the election.

Ruling

On Feb 20, Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise, two of Trump’s lawyers, filed a motion asking for permission to file “at least 10 pretrial motions.” That document would have been as long as 200 pages.

Denial

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“All pre-trial motions,” Cannon ruled on Feb 20, “shall be filed on an individual basis to permit clear adjudication of the legal/factual issues presented and to facilitate record clarity and scheduling.”

Bigger is better

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“The Court hereby enlarges the page limit for individual pre-trial motions and responses to twenty-five double-spaced pages,” Cannon also ruled, “exclusive of attachments.” The combined length of the motions, then, will likely be over 250 pages.

The final piece

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Cannon also told Trump’s lawyers that they must indicate whether a motion requires a hearing. That could mean at least ten extra hearings being added to the case.

Piling up

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Put together, Cannon’s decision gives Trump’s lawyers plenty of opportunity to add further delays to the court case. Each motion they file must be submitted individually, studied individually, could involve a hearing, and so on.

No release

Cannon also refused to allow Trump to publicly release censored versions of some of the motions.

Looming deadline

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Trump’s lawyers must file all of their motions before Feb 22.

Different topics

According to Trump’s legal team, the pretrial motions they want to file might involve “the appointment of Jack Smith, presidential immunity, the Presidential Records Act, selective and vindictive prosecution, the unconstitutional vagueness of 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), due process violations, prosecutorial misconduct, impermissible pre-indictment delay, the illegal raid at Mar-a-Lago, and improper violations of President Trump’s attorney-client privilege.”

Fury

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Cannon has repeatedly been criticized for allegedly allowing Trump to delay the trial as much as possible. On Feb 8, Jack Smith complained to her that Trump was carrying out a “relentless and misleading” plot to delay the trial.

No holding back

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Smith argued Trump and his team “will stop at nothing to stall the adjudication of the charges against them by a fair and impartial jury of citizens.”

Others involved

Trump’s two co-accused, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveria, also “plan to file additional pretrial motions in separate briefs,” Trump’s lawyers noted.

Slim chance

The chance of this trial happening before the presidential election “would take a moon shot,” according to legal expert Joyce Vance. That’s in part due to Cannon continually stringing “out the timeline.”

Direct accusation

In January, Slate accused Cannon of “quietly sabotaging the Trump classified documents case” by continually delaying it. A “mountain of evidence,” the article argued, demonstrated that Cannong “is firmly in the former president’s pocket.”

Doing a favor

Cannon was appointed by President Trump. The New York Times wrote that she “shocked legal experts across ideological lines last year by intervening in the investigation and issuing rulings favorable to Mr. Trump, only to be rebuked by a conservative appeals court.”