Former President Donald Trump appears on track to secure another legal victory as U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is expected to once again push back the former president’s trial date for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case.
Smith is currently requesting a trial schedule that will begin on July 8, just one week before the Republican National Convention. Judge Cannon has hinted that the trial will be pushed back even further, however, calling Smith’s demands “unreasonable.”
During the four-hour hearing on Friday, Smith argued that the DOJ’s policy of not bringing criminal charges against elected officials within 60 days of an election does not apply to Trump’s political schedule, as the case was brought more than a year before the November election. “We’re in full compliance with that policy,” a prosecutor with Smith’s office told the judge, according to CNN legal reporter Paula Reid.
The hearing ended without a definitive ruling from Cannon, though she did hint that the July 8 trial date is increasingly out of the question, calling the request “unreasonable.”