Former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in the classified documents case has been assigned a start date.

A Florida federal judge on Tuesday scheduled the trial to begin on August 14.

That would be just over two months after Trump was indicted and pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts related to his alleged mishandling classified documents he took to his Mar-a-Lago home.

However, legal experts doubt the trial would start by mid-August, citing complex legal issues that need to be resolved before a jury could hear evidence and testimony.

On Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon also told Justice Department prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys to file pretrial motions by July 24. Cannon ordered that the trial and all hearings be held in the US District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Cannon’s order comes a day after US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered Trump’s lawyers not to release evidence in the case to the media or public. Reinhart also imposed strict parameters on Trump’s access to the materials.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the case, said he would seek a speedy trial, but many experts do not believe that will happen.

‘In every case that I had involving classified information, we never had a speedy trial,’ Stephanie Siegmann, ex-chief of the national security unit of the US Attorney’s Office in Boston, said earlier this month.

A former lawyer for Trump in the case, Tim Parlatore, last week said, ‘I wouldn’t foresee this thing getting tried within a year’.

‘I can foresee some fairly substantive motions to dismiss’ the indictment, he told Axios. ‘I could also see them going through several discovery motions, and there will be fights over disclosure. I think each round of motions is going to take three months.’

Trump on Monday again said he did not return the boxes of government records that officials sought for months because they contained personal belongings.

‘Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things,’ Trump told Fox News. ‘I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.’

On Tuesday, Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform were focused on attacking President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s guilty plea to federal tax and gun charges.

‘The Hunter/Joe Biden settlement is a massive COVERUP & FULL SCALE ELECTION INTERFERENCE “SCAM” THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN OUR COUNTRY BEFORE,’ wrote Trump.

Trump likened the charges against Hunter Biden to ‘A “TRAFFIC TICKET”‘ while accusing the ‘CROOKED DOJ, STATE, & CITY PROSECUTORS, MARXISTS & COMMUNISTS’ hitting him ‘FROM ALL SIDES’.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Source: Read Full Article