The trial against Donald Trump for seven crimes and a total of 37 charges for the concealment and retention of the hundreds of classified documents that he took from the White House, to his residence in Mar-a-Lago, was scheduled yesterday for May 20, 2024, in the middle of the electoral process towards the presidential elections in November of that year.
The judge in the case, Aileen Cannon, chosen for the position by the former president himself, presented the schedule of the judicial procedure yesterday, three days after the defense requested in a hearing that the hearing be held after the presidential elections in November 2024. The Prosecutor’s Office, for its part, had proposed that the trial begin in December of this year. The chosen date is, therefore, halfway between the requests of the parties.
If the indication were to be maintained, the trial would undoubtedly mark the presidential campaign, perhaps together with the process against the ultra leader for the assault on the Capitol and other attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 elections: an affair for which Trump could be impeached in the coming days, after the special prosecutor Jack Smith sent him the letter a few days ago indicating that he is the subject of an investigation. The charges this time would be three, according to leaks published in various local media: conspiracy to defraud the United States, deprivation of the right to vote and tampering with a witness.
The date set for the hearing in the case of the secret papers is after most of the primaries for the election of the Republican presidential candidate: with the exception of half a dozen states, those primaries will take place between January 15 and May 14.
According to Judge Cannon’s ruling, the trial for the case of the classified documents must be held in Fort Pierce, a coastal city in Florida about 200 kilometers north of Miami, a favorable territory for Trump, with a jury made up of citizens of counties where he won the two previous presidential races.
It is said that the former president’s defense will do everything possible to delay the trial to, as it proposed in its initial request, postpone it until after the elections. Judge Cannon left the basis for this claim established, as she indicated in her hearing on Wednesday that this is a “complex” case.
The summary concerns the appropriation, unlawful transfer, concealment and retention of the hundreds of documents that, classified with marks of “top secret”, “secret” or “confidential”, Trump illegally took from the White House to his residence in Florida after losing the election against Joe Biden in November 2020.
For those facts, the prosecutor accuses the ex-president of conspiracy to obstruct justice, tampering with witnesses, false statements and deliberate retention of secret documents in violation of the espionage law.
Of the long half-dozen criminal and civil cases that the ex-president faces for his political and business decisions, five already have a trial date: before the question of the secret papers in May 2020 – if not later – in October will be the lawsuit for fraud against the real estate emporium called the Trump Organization; a second civil defamation trial will take place on January 15 for writer Jean Carroll, who last month won a first lawsuit against him for defamation and sexual abuse with $5 million in damages; On January 29, he and three of his children will go on trial for defrauding investors, and in March he is scheduled to go on trial on 34 counts of forgery in the payment of a bribe to porn star Stormy Daniels. A whole viacrucis that Trump will try to turn into a rosary of allegations of political persecution.
Will the Republican Party continue to support him and accuse him of instrumentalizing justice? Although it is hard to believe, there is no indication at this time that this support should be withdrawn.
