Judge Aileen Cannon is on track to buy former President Donald Trump some more time before he has to go to trial for the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Cannon issued a new order on Thursday, denying Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for the judge to set a deadline for Trump’s team to disclose to prosecutors what information the defense intends to use at trial.
Cannon said that all deadlines related to Section 5 of the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), which requires the defense to provide the Justice Department with a narrowed-down list of information from discovery, would be set during the conference scheduled for March 1, 2024. The Department of Justice declined to comment.
If the CIPA deadline is not set until March, legal experts say it’s highly unlikely that the trial begin on the tentative May 20, 2024 date. Trump’s team has pushed for that trial date, as well as the one in his three other criminal cases, to be pushed until after Election Day.
