A federal judge on Friday set Donald Trump’s historic trial for his handling of state secrets for May next year as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up.
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The trial, the first to target a former US president, who is also a new candidate for the White House, will open in federal court in Fort Pierce, some 210 kilometers north of Miami, Florida (southeast), on May 20, 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon said.
It thus intends to give the parties time to examine a file of nearly 1.1 million pages, not to mention the challenge that lies ahead with regard to the examination of these documents for certain ultra-confidential ones.
“No one disputes that the defense will need sufficient time to review and assess the case,” the judge, appointed by President Trump, wrote in her judgment.
Prosecutors had called for the trial to begin in December, while defense lawyers argued for a trial after the November 2024 presidential election.
“It is not certain that the date of the trial can hold”, underlines however the lawyer Carl Tobias, of the university of Richmond, by foreseeing long exchanges of procedure before the opening of the trial.
But if it takes place as planned in May 2024, it will then be held in the middle of the Republican primary campaign which must designate the candidate who will face, barring an accident, Democrat Joe Biden in November 2024, and for which Donald Trump, 77, is the big favorite according to the polls.
The Republican Party convention which will designate the winner of the primaries is scheduled for mid-July in Milwaukee (Wisconsin, north) but the bulk of the primary elections will have taken place before May 20.
The trial will not prevent the billionaire from campaigning, but it is customary for an accused to be physically present at the hearings. And the trial is expected to last weeks if not months.
37 charges
Charged in mid-June with 37 counts including “illegal retention of information relating to national security”, “obstructing justice” and “false testimony”, Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in federal court in Miami.
The former Republican president speaks of “persecution” and assures that he had the right to keep documents.
He is accused of endangering the security of the United States by keeping confidential documents after his departure from the White House in January 2021, including military plans or information on nuclear weapons, in a bathroom or storage room of his luxury residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, instead of turning them over to the National Archives.
However, the law obliges any American president to transmit all of his e-mails, letters and other working documents to the National Archives. Another law, on espionage, prohibits keeping state secrets in unauthorized and unsecured places.
The case had led the federal police (FBI) to launch a spectacular search of his Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022.
According to the indictment, boxes remained stacked here and there, in particular on the stage of a “ballroom”, in a bedroom or an office, before being transported to a “storeroom” accessible from the swimming pool, where certain documents marked with the mention “secret defense” were seen spread out on the ground.
A former personal assistant to Donald Trump, Walt Nauta, charged with complicity in this case and who also pleaded not guilty, will be tried at the same time as his former boss.
Since leaving the White House, Donald Trump has experienced a series of legal disputes that could weigh heavily during the presidential election.
He is personally targeted in the federal investigation into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, and could be accused of “conspiracy” against the state, among other things.
He is charged in the Stormy Daniels case, concerning a payment in 2016 to this porn actress for her to conceal an alleged affair. He also received a civil conviction for a sexual assault.
And a Georgia prosecutor must announce by September the result of her investigation into the pressure he exerted to try to change the result of the 2020 presidential election, won by Joe Biden.
Despite everything, the former president, already acquitted twice during impeachment proceedings when he was in the White House, swears that he will not throw in the towel.