Special counsel Jack Smith asks for new court date for Trump’s trial

Special Counsel Jack Smith said that he was aiming for a speedy trial for Donald Trump when he announced the criminal charges against the former president. Even he must have been a little surprised, as the rest of us were, that Judge Aileen Cannon set the date for August 14. Friday Smith requested the trial date be moved back to December 11.

Judge Cannon is 42 years old and she was appointed by Donald Trump. She has been Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida since 2020. The irony is not lost on anyone that a Trump-appointed judge is presiding over this case. If she sticks with her original decision to hold the trial in Fort Pierce, Florida, that is Trump-friendly territory. The jury may very well be taken from counties that Trump won in his previous presidential campaigns. Them’s the breaks when a special counsel decided to politicize the DOJ and persecute, er, prosecute a former president.

Smith, in the filing, said the August 14 date set by Cannon was too soon, and ‘would deny counsel for the defendant or the attorney for the Government the reasonable time necessary for effective preparation.’

He added: ‘This case is not so unusual or complex … because it has only two defendants, involves straightforward theories of liability, and does not present novel questions of fact or law. However, the case does involve classified information and will necessitate defense counsel obtaining the requisite security clearances,’ prosecutors wrote in the filing.

‘In addition, the associated legal process under the Classified Information Procedures Act will inject additional time into the leadup to trial that otherwise would not be involved.’

The judge said the date may change when she announced it so she likely will agree to the change.

Trump was arraigned in federal court in Miami last week. He pleaded not guilty to 37 charges that he unlawfully kept national security documents when he left office and that he lied to officials when they sought to recover them. His legal team has not responded to Smith’s request yet.

Smith’s office also gave Trump and his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, a list of the names of 84 people with whom neither of the men can discuss the case. If they do, they can be held in contempt of court and jailed.

Strict rules will have to be in place for this trial to proceed under the Classified Information Procedures Act. That act is meant to protect classified evidence and manage how such records are disclosed. Not all documents that were confiscated during the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago were labeled as classified documents and some of the items, according to Trump, were personal items mixed in with the material.

In the court filings by Smith’s office on Friday, he presented a schedule in the lead-up to the proposed start date of jury selection on December 11. He set a September 5 deadline for all defense discovery requests. According to Smith, Trump’s lawyers do not oppose the later court date. He does, however, expect Trump’s team to file a motion opposing the prosecution’s proposed schedule. All of the filings from Smith’s office on Friday were part of normal trial preparation.

Earlier this week, the government shared copies of taped interviews Trump gave as part of the discovery process.

The government’s 37-count indictment quotes directly from one Trump interview – conducted at his Bedminister, New Jersey club with a writer and publisher of former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ book.

That conversation includes key information where Trump brandishes what he says is secret information while discussing a plan to attack Iran.

According to the government’s response to the court’s discovery order, prosecutors have produced ‘interviews of Defendant Trump conducted by non-government entities, which were recorded with his consent and obtained by the Special Counsel’s Office during the investigation of this case, including the July 21, 2021 recorded interview Defendant Trump provided to a publisher and writer quoted in part in the Indictment.’

t does not otherwise provide information about the substance of the interview, or whether or not it is from a traditional media entity.

Prosecutors also turned over ‘public statements made by Defendant Trump, including the public statements quoted int he Indictment.’

A majority of Americans think that Trump is being unfairly prosecuted by Biden’s over-politicized DOJ and Smith. That said, it is also true that Trump appears to have brought this trouble upon himself. Both opinions can be true at the same time. There are plenty of examples of Democrats acting badly with sensitive government documents. Those Democrats are walking around free as birds. However, in this case, there are tapes with Trump’s voice on them and he is saying some incriminating things.

It remains to be seen how Trump moves forward. All of this is happening in the midst of his presidential campaign and GOP primary race. It is still up in the air as to whether or not Trump has agreed to participate in the first Republican debate on FOX in August. It also remains to be seen how much he uses his legal troubles as fodder for fundraising and as red meat to his core supporters at campaign rallies. He has to be giving heartburn to his legal team every time he starts talking about Smith and the criminal charges. Usually, lawyers tell their clients to clam up and don’t talk about the charges against them.

We are in uncharted territory here. In Biden’s America, a top political opponent is being prosecuted and potentially jailed before the presidential election takes place. Our descent into a banana republic under the guidance of Joe Biden continues as planned.