The trial over former President Trump's possession of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida has been delayed indefinitely.
The judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, cites unresolved pre-trial issues as the reason for the indefinite delay, which will all but guarantee that the trial will not be conducted before the November presidential election.
Justin Levitt teaches constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University and served as a Deputy assistant, Attorney General, and senior policy advisor at the Biden White House. He spoke with KNX News Chief Correspondent Charles Feldman to explain the whole situation.
Judge Aileen Cannon is a Trump appointee; does that raise any suspicion?
"It shouldn't, certainly, and I don't think it would had it not been for some really unusual rulings up to now.
So [Tuesday's] ruling delayed trial for at least a few months. Indefinitely doesn't mean forever, but it does mean at least until late July, and I think that there wouldn't be a real question about that had this been the first or maybe even the second or third, delay, the issues raised today are serious, but they follow on the heels of almost a year's worth of delay already, and it's some of those rulings that have earned judge can in very little leeway.
Some of those rulings were truly bizarre and raised the question independent of Trump's appointment of her about whether she was 'pulling for the home team' or whether she was really dispensing justice fairly."
What are some of the significant issues that come with this indefinite delay?
"The big one, and it's looming over everything, are the treatment of classified information. That's no joke, and it's part of why I say that the issues raised in [Tuesday's] filing are real - they also have to do with not only the treatment of classified information in court but also the treatment of classified information in discovery.
There are complicated procedures for how you give classified information to whom, and particularly, some of the information that I suspect the defense has asked for involves investigations into why the information was classified, which raised issues of their own.
So today's issues are no joke; they're possible to work through, and this is a slow, not crazily slow, but slow, timeline - But as I mentioned, we've already been pushed into this time frame by some very questionable rulings before [Tuesday], including indulging sub defense theories about what the law permits and what it allows, that to most reasonable observers seem like they should have been nonstarters from the get-go but took the court an awful long time to decide."
Will voters have enough information in time to impact their decision at the ballot box in November?
"I don't think it's likely that we'll have an outcome before November. It is certainly possible, not least because most of the delay up until now has been Mr. Trump's doing. So if he wanted it pushed into campaign season, he's gotten his wish.
It is still possible to have a trial this fall, [but] I'll say voters don't need the outcome of this trial to let the facts alleged influence their decision.
He's accused of holding classified documents at his home in a way that he shouldn't have, and not only that but disclosing national military secrets about other countries' military, including nuclear secrets.
All of those facts are known and, so the legal liability shouldn't be the most important thing when voters go to make their decision, the conduct that he's accused of is serious enough for voters to consider on their own, even without a finding in the criminal trial."
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