From Salon: “Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked the federal judge overseeing his Mar-a-Lago criminal case to delay the trial until after the 2024 election, arguing that he has not received all of the records his legal team needs to review.
The former president’s legal team in a motion asked Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to delay the trial until “at least mid-November 2024,” claiming “discovery failures” by special counsel Jack Smith’s office.”
According to The Guardian, Trump has tried to delay the classified documents trial ever since he was charged by prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith, including asking to postpone setting a trial date indefinitely as they worked through complex procedural and evidentiary rules in the case.
The efforts are the result of Trump’s bet that if he were to win the election and the trials were delayed, he could direct his attorney general to drop the cases. Even if he lost, the closer the trials were to the election, the more he could allege the prosecutions were politically motivated.
Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, has argued that the prosecutions amount to “election interference” even as he took time off the campaign trail to campaign in court during his New York fraud trial this week. New York Attorney General Letitia James blasted Trump’s appearance and outbursts at the courthouse as a “fundraising stop.”
Former federal prosecutor and New York University Law Prof. Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team, warned that Trump’s courthouse campaigning could come back to bite him in his other cases.