Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Miami magistrate handling the Mar-a-Lago papers case, has set for the Monday, May 20, 2024 the first session of the trial, which will be held in Fort Pierce, a city in the state of Florida, more than 200 kilometers from Miami.
The date is important as it will mark the campaign for the presidential elections that will be held in November 2024.
In the middle of the presidential campaign
Former President Donald Trump’s team wanted the trial to take place once the campaign was over and the prosecutor in the case wanted it to be before the end of 2023. But neither one nor the other have succeeded. The Miami judge has been Solomonic.
The date is supposed to be a political earthquake. The trial will take place in the middle of the presidential campaign, in which Trump will try to win the Republican pennant to run for the White House. At the moment he is the favorite against his rival the conservative and current governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.
How is the case with the Mar-a-Lago papers?
Trump faces 37 counts for seven criminal offenses:
- 31 for deliberately withholding classified documents
- 3 for hiding papers from federal investigations
- 2 for falsehood
- 1 for conspiracy to obstruct justice with one of his employees, Walt Nauta.
Among the classified documents are White House intelligence briefings, including some detailing the military and nuclear capabilities of both the United States and other countries. Prosecutors allege that Trump showed those documents to people who were not authorized to review them and then tried to hide them from his own lawyers. The main charges carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
How did this case come about?
- Spring 2021. National Archives and Records Administration officials contacted Trump representatives after realizing it was missing material important from when he was in power. Under the Presidential Records Act, White House documents are considered US Government property and must be preserved.
- In December of that same year, a Trump representative assured the National Archives that they had found presidential documents at Mar-a-Lago and a month later they returned 15 boxes containing “a lot of classified material,” according to Justice Department officials.
- In May 2022, the FBI and the Justice Department issued a subpoena to recover the classified documents still in Trump’s possession. Investigators who went to Mar-a-Lago were given three dozen documents and an affidavit from their lawyers assuring that everything had already been returned, but that claim turned out to be false.
- In August, federal officials, with a search warrant, returned to Trump’s Florida mansion and seized more than 33 boxes and containers containing more than 11,000 documents, including 100 classified documents. In total, 300 secret documents have been recovered since he left office in January 2021.
If convicted, could he be re-elected in 2024?
Neither the indictment nor the conviction would prevent him from running and winning the presidency in 2024. The United States Constitution does not provide for it. The only possibility that exists to stop his race to the White House is that he be convicted of inciting rebellion, according to the 14th amendment of the magna carta, but experts say that is unlikely. What is clear is that this accusation accentuates, even more, the division among Americans.
And as happened after the New York case, the charges benefited him when it came to raising funds. The campaign announced that it had raised more than $4 million in the 24 hours after the indictment, far exceeding its previous record after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.
