WASHINGTON — Federal Judge Florida who presides over judgment against former president Donald Trump Due to retention of confidential documents, it canceled the start of the process scheduled for May 20, postponing it indefinitely.
The trial against the former president was due to begin on May 20, but Judge Aileen Cannon said that would not be possible due to the high number of motions filed with the court.
The judge did not announce any date for the start of the trial.
In his five-page order, Cannon noted Tuesday that it would be “unwise” to set a new trial date at this time, raising further questions about federal prosecutors’ ability to bring Trump to trial before the presidential election. next November.
The postponement is a severe setback for special prosecutor Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, and makes it unlikely that the trial will be held before the November elections, in which the former president is the Republican candidate for president. Smith intended to put Trump on trial before the election.
The magnate’s lawyers have tried to delay his various criminal cases until after the elections.
Trump77, is currently on trial in New York in a state case.
A court accuses him of allegedly falsifying 34 accounting documents to hide a payment of $130,000 intended to buy the silence of former porn film actress Stormy Daniels, in the final stretch of the 2016 elections, which the Republican magnate won against Hillary Clinton. .
“Not guilty”
Last June, Trump pleaded not guilty in Florida to federal charges of withholding national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements.
The former president kept classified files — including records from the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Agency — unsecured at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and hampered official efforts to recover them, according to the indictment.
Trump is the only one the Biden administration’s Justice Department is charging over the classified documents. The FBI found secret documents for former Vice President Mike Pence, as well as for President Joe Biden.
“An old man with a bad memory”
Special prosecutor Robert Hur, appointed by the Department of Justice to “investigate” Biden for the secret documents found in four different places, decided not to file charges against the tenant of the White House, he is an “old man with a bad memory.”
The biggest alarm sounded when special prosecutor Hur estimated that the current president’s memory is so impaired that he does not even remember What date was he vice president? y When did his son Beau die, who died of cancer in 2015?.
Hur was appointed in January 2023 by Attorney General Merrick Garland after hundreds of secret documents were found in a Biden home in Wilmington, Delaware, and in a former office. They date from when he was vice president (2009-2017) in Barack Obama’s government, a power that no vice president of the nation has. That is to say, it is absolutely illegal for a vice president to take any classified official document for his personal file.
The 388-page report claims that Biden has “intentionally withheld and disclosed classified materials” after leaving the vice presidency, long before defeating Trump in 2020.
Hur, previously appointed by Trump as chief prosecutor for the state of Maryland, explains that FBI agents recovered several boxes of documents on military affairs and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other matters of great relevance and directly related to national security.
Despite that, Hur said that “the evidence is not enough to convict” Biden.
Motions
In the document published this Tuesday, Cannon said that the large number of pretrial motions and the classified nature of some of the evidence in the case forced the start of the process to be postponed.
“Therefore, the Court vacates the current trial date of May 20, 2024,” he wrote.
In addition to the cases of New York and Florida, Trump He has been accused in Washington and Georgia of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, his likely rival in November.
The Supreme Court is weighing Trump’s arguments that he is immune from federal prosecution in another case in which special prosecutor Jack Smith accuses him of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Fulton County Prosecutor’s Office , Georgia, also filed another case related to electoral subversion, although it is not clear when it could come to trial, following the love scandal between District Attorney Fani Willis and the special prosecutor appointed by her, Nathan Wade.
Source: With information from AFP and AP
