It’s one less big bump in Donald Trump’s road to the US presidential election in November. A federal court in Florida on Tuesday postponed indefinitely the start of the criminal trial of the former tenant of the White House in the case where he is accused of having made negligent use of classified documents.
In this criminal case, one of four in which he is targeted, a trial was to open on May 20. But the federal judge considered this date untenable due to the number of preliminary requests presented to the court. Aileen Cannon, a magistrate appointed by the former president, has not set a new date.
A trial underway in New York
The decision is a setback for special prosecutor Jack Smith and makes a trial in the case before the November election highly unlikely. The Republican candidate is currently on trial in New York in another case, that concerning suspicious payments before the 2016 presidential election.
In the Florida case, Donald Trump is being sued along with two of his personal assistants for his handling of classified documents at his private residence in Mar-a-Lago, located in this southeastern state, after his departure from the House. White in January 2021.
Trump denounces a “witch hunt”
He is accused of having compromised national security by keeping these documents, including military plans or information on nuclear weapons, instead of handing them over to the National Archives as required by law. He is also accused of attempting to destroy evidence in the case. The heaviest charges are punishable by ten years in prison.
Targeted by four separate criminal proceedings, including the one for which he has been appearing since April 15 in New York, Donald Trump repeatedly denounces a “witch hunt” hatched by the Joe Biden administration to eliminate him from the race to the White House. If he were elected again, he could, once inaugurated in January 2025, order the abandonment of the two federal proceedings against him: this case investigated in Florida, as well as that carried out in the capital Washington for accusations of illegal attempts to reverse the results of the presidential election won by Joe Biden in 2020.