July 13, 2023
The Department of Justice basically just called bullshit on former President Trump’s request to postpone his classified documents criminal trial indefinitely.
The DOJ just filed this 11 page response and said “there is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the defendant’s provide none.”
Judge Aileen Cannon is currently considering when the schedule the former president’s federal criminal trial for holding all those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. She set the date initially for mid-August, the Justice Department said it should start on December 11th of this year and as I told you in this video, Trump’s lawyers said it should be put on hold indefinitely and if not indefinitely should be postponed until after the election for several reasons.
The Trump team listed a whole bunch of logistical and political reasons for that including, the former president is too busy campaigning and can’t prepare, his legal team has other cases to deal and they can’t prepare, since he’s running for president again it would be impossible to find an unbiased jury and there is just too much evidence to go through and they can’t be ready in time.
The Justice Department goes through each of those claims and disputes them.
They say there’s actually not that much evidence to go through. They say the Trump team conveniently left out the fact that the DOJ gave the trump team a list of key documents on which they’re basing the charges. That only includes 4500 pages which is a reasonable amount of evidence to go through in 5 months.
As for the claim that an impartial jury can’t be found before the 2024 election, the DOJ says “there is no reason to credit the claim” and if the defense is so concerned about the jury selection process, this trial should start sooner rather than later. They say the process of selecting a jury before or after an election isn’t going to change.
And this whole idea that trump is too busy campaigning and his lawyers are too busy with other cases, is irrelevant. Saying “many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel. The speedy trial act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance and the court should not indulge it here.”
Both the former president’s team and the Department of Justice team will be in that federal florida court next Tuesday to go over procedures for handling classified documents during the trial. It’s unclear if judge cannon will rule on a trial date before or after that.
Read the Trump filing here.
