Donald Trump's attorneys may use his Mar-a-Lago unclassified documents case in Florida to create additional challenges in the two criminal cases he is up against, playing a game of legal hopscotch to create advantageous campaign conditions, per a new report from CNN.
The former president and his lawyers have been transparent in their efforts to prevent him from being tried in federal court before the November election. “The Special Counsel seeks urgently to force President Trump into a months-long criminal trial at the height of campaign season, effectively sidelining him and preventing him from campaigning against the current President,” Trump’s legal team recently wrote to the Supreme Court.
Chief among these efforts is to hamper Judge Tanya Chutkan — the Washington D.C. judge overseeing Trump's election subversion case — from starting the trial before the 2024 presidential election, given that the case poses a significant legal threat to Trump's ability to return to the White House.
“Meaning, ice her,” said a person close to Trump’s trial strategy told CNN. “Making it impossible for her to jam a trial down before the election, by things that are out of her control.”
The election subversion case, initially slated by Chutkan to begin trial on March 4, has been delayed indefinitely due to appeals. As CNN noted, one method of ensuring that the Supreme Court does not return the case to Chutkan in a timely manner is to persuade Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee overseeing the documents case, to push the Mar-a-Lago trial into the summer. Sources familiar with the case told CNN that doing so would likely result in even further delays for the documents trial "because of the legal complexities around classified documents that still have to be worked out."
Though both Chutkan and Cannon have declined to push their respective trials they are overseeing past the November elections, Cannon has indicated that she may consider moving the date back from when it is currently set to begin, on May 20. Some experts have hypothesized that Cannon is using the current May trial date as a "blocker" to effectively stymie other cases from going to trial by creating restrictions. The judge has already faced criticism for expressing a bias favoring Trump's defense team and for intentionally dragging out the case.
Chutkan conversely is an Obama-era appointee who has already ruled against Trump's presidential immunity claim, writing in a December decision that "Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability. Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office."
One of CNN's sources alleged that the D.C. judge "might have him on trial the day of the election. If she wants to do that, we might as well just make Trump president right now."
Trump, his lawyers, and co-defendants will appear before Cannon on Friday, along with special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors. As CNN observed, the hearing will likely cover scheduling challenges and other contentious points related to the case. Sources aware of the ex-president's legal scheme noted that his defense team is planning to ask Cannon to move the trial date back to July, rendering Chutkan potentially unable to schedule the D.C. trial before November.
Both the special counsel and Chutkan have said they feel Trump's federal election case should be swiftly seen by a jury. “[Trump’s] personal interest in postponing trial proceedings must be weighed against two powerful countervailing considerations: the government’s interest in fully presenting its case without undue delay; and the public’s compelling interest in a prompt disposition of the case,” the Justice Department wrote to the Supreme Court.
“The charges here involve applicant’s alleged efforts to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters,” the special counsel’s office continued. “The national interest in resolving those charges without further delay is compelling.”
Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump's New York criminal hush money case (set to begin at the end of March) has been in contact with Chutkan to discuss trial timing.
“There is a lot of moving parts in the DC case. Really nobody knows what’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen,” Merchan said at a recent hearing.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche vocally opposed the New York trial timeline at the hearing, arguing that “We have been faced with extremely compressed and expedited schedules in each and every one of those trials."
Merchan did note, however, that Trump should not be tried by more than one court at the same time.
“Mr. Trump does have an absolute right to be present in all of his criminal trials,” the judge said at the hearing. “It’s an important right, and one that he has every right to certainly take advantage of. He’s not going to be in more than one criminal trial at the same time.”
