The trial’s start date is a compromise between the prosecution’s request to hold it in December 2023 and the defense team’s plea to postpone it until after the November 2024 presidential election.
The trial for Trump, 77, who is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, will take place during the most intense phase of the primary contest to choose the party’s nominee for the general election.
Trump’s legal team had claimed that a start date of December was not a reasonable amount of time for either side to prepare in court documents earlier in July.
While stating that campaigning “requires a tremendous amount of time and energy,” his attorneys also questioned whether the former president would receive a fair trial prior to the election.
Regardless of what Judge Cannon had ruled, the trial marks unexplored political ground for the US. Trump is the first US president, past or present, to be charged with a crime.
No US presidential candidate, much less a party frontrunner, has managed the two separate criminal trials that are certain to take place during election season.
Trump has also been accused of fabricating business records connected to payments made to a porn star in a New York state lawsuit in addition to the federal document case. Currently, that trial is scheduled to start in March 2024.
A motion to transfer the New York trial to federal court was denied on Wednesday by a federal judge.
Trump’s legal team had contended that the case required a change of venue since it involved his official presidential duties. The judge retorted that the allegations concerned his personal behavior rather than his conduct as president.
In April, Trump entered a not-guilty plea in the New York state case. In a Florida courtroom in June, he entered a not guilty plea in the federal documents case.
Regarding the alleged removal of sensitive papers from the White House and storage and concealment of them at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump is charged with 37 felonies in the federal prosecution.
Walt Nauta, one of his assistants, is also accused of hindering the Department of Justice’s inquiry into the materials.
At least two additional criminal inquiries are being conducted into Trump, and charges may be brought in the near future.
Trump disclosed on Tuesday that he had received a letter designating him as the subject of a different Department of Justice investigation into alleged attempts to rig the 2020 presidential election.
His acts leading up to and during the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, are covered by that probe.
Trump is also the focus of a criminal investigation in Georgia regarding suspected attempts to influence an election official to change the outcomes of the state’s 2020 election.
Tuesday, the California Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to have the case dismissed.
[sourcelink link=”https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/21/trial-in-donald-trump-classified-documents-case-set-for-may-2024″]
