A
preliminary trial date has been set for mid-August by the federal judge
overseeing the Justice Department's investigation of former President Donald
Trump on allegations of mishandling sensitive national security information and
obstructing the legal process.
Judge
Aileen Cannon for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida
on Tuesday issued an order scheduling Trump’s trial to begin on Aug. 14, though
Trump’s team is expected to file a number of motions seeking to delay the
proceedings on various grounds.
Based in the complexity of the case, the order leaves
the possibility of continuances and issues around classified documents and
security clearances
Cannon’s
order requires pre-trial motions to be filed in just over a month, on July
24. That deadline could prove tricky for Trump to meet as he continues to
scramble to assemble a legal team to defend him.
However, Trump’s current lawyers reportedly do not yet have security
clearance to view the classified documents at the center of the case.
Trump
was indicted by a federal grand jury earlier this month on charges that include
willful retention of national defence information, conspiracy to obstruct
justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or
record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, a scheme to conceal
and making false statements.
According
to prosecutors, Trump held on to a cache of incredibly sensitive, classified
national security materials after leaving office; stored them in areas
accessible to the public; refused to turn the documents back over to the
government; hatched and executed a plan to hide documents from his lawyers and
the government in defiance of a federal subpoena; and, in two separate
incidents, knowingly showed classified documents to people who did not have
clearance to see such information.
Trump’s
legal team is expected to challenge several aspects of the indictment before a
trial gets underway.
The
complexity of the case and the classified materials at the heart of it also
mean that the Justice Department and the other parties in the Trump will have
to come to an agreement about how to present classified evidence at trial –
another process that could push back the start of the trial.
Trump
is the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. A
conviction on the charges, which could include prison time, could upend that race.
But
should Trump win the GOP nomination and then the general election – and if his
team is also able to delay the trial until after the election – Trump could
then install a friendly attorney general that could effectively dismiss the
case.