The defense team for Donald Trump redoubled its efforts on Wednesday to seek for a November 2024 start date for the former president’s secret materials trial, which would shift the case out of the way of the next election.
Trump’s legal team said in a Florida court filing that the May trial should begin at least six months later due to a separate federal trial where Trump will be tried as a defendant. Additionally, they claimed that not all of the evidence had yet been provided to special counsel Jack Smith’s office by the prosecution.
Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise, attorneys for Trump, claimed in a letter that they are still unable to acquire nine papers that Trump is accused by Smith’s office of illegally keeping after leaving the White House. They said that until recently, a batch of discovery materials that more than doubled the volume of materials was suppressed without an explanation from government prosecutors.
They also claimed that Smith’s office is preventing “certain [unclassified] agents’ communications” from being disclosed during discovery and that there are still unreleased classified documents that haven’t been given to Trump’s lawyers.
The attorneys additionally stated that Trump’s defense is being hampered by the demands of the two cases brought by the special counsel against him and that this is a violation of his right to due process. Beginning on March 4, Trump will stand trial in Washington, D.C., in a lawsuit concerning efforts to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election.
No matter the cost, the Special Counsel’s Office is putting up a reckless effort to try to prosecute President Trump before the 2024 Election. The employment of the criminal justice system to achieve that goal should not be permitted by the Court, according to Trump’s attorneys.
A prior attempt to postpone the trial for the classified materials until November 2024 was rejected during the summer by the federal court in Florida that is overseeing the case.
The office of the special counsel declined to comment on the latest filing, pointing instead to one that prosecutors made this week on Trump’s request to push up the trial until November 2024.
On Monday, Smith’s office stated that Trump’s lawyers’ “unfounded claims” regarding “Government noncompliance with discovery requirements do not support their request.”
The Government anticipates that the [classified information security officer] will address any outstanding issues this week, notwithstanding their distorted and inflated assertions that they are unable to assess classified information. There is no justification for postponing the trial date. Prosecutors argued that the defendant’s motion should be rejected.