Judge sets Trump classified documents trial for May 2024, months before election

Former President Donald Trump's trial on charges of mishandling classified documents will begin on May 20, 2024, a federal judge ordered Friday.

Judge Aileen Cannon laid out the schedule three days after defense lawyers argued that the case should not head to trial until after the November 2024 presidential election, due to Trump's status as a current presidential candidate.

The trial will take place in U.S. District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida, Cannon ordered.

The ruling from Cannon lands on a middle ground between the requests of Trump's legal team and the Department of Justice, which had pushed for the trial to begin in late 2023.

Polls show Trump is currently leading the 2024 Republican primary field. If the case moves forward as currently scheduled, the trial could come after a slew of key states have already held their nominating contests. The Republican National Convention, where the GOP will select its presidential nominee, is set to take place in Milwaukee in mid-July 2024.

Trump's attorney Todd Blanche declined to comment on the judge's ruling.

Trump last month pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal counts related to his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021 and subsequent alleged efforts to conceal them from the government. Walt Nauta, his valet and co-defendant, has pleaded not guilty to six criminal charges.

The case has been assigned to Cannon, a Trump appointee who had previously faced criticism after ruling in Trump's favor in a separate legal dispute related to the classified records.

Last week, Trump's attorneys had asked Cannon to postpone setting a trial date and asked her to reject the DOJ's request to start the trial in mid-December. Cannon appeared skeptical of both parties' requests in a hearing Tuesday afternoon, NBC News reported.

Cannon's seven-page ruling Friday morning noted that both the prosecutors and the defendants agreed that the trial should be held later than its original Aug. 14 start date.

But, she wrote, "As a preliminary matter, the Court rejects Defendants' request to withhold setting of a schedule now."

The DOJ's proposal to start the trial in December, meanwhile, "is atypically accelerated and inconsistent with ensuring a fair trial," she added.

The case includes a massive amount of evidence, including more than 1.1 million pages of records, at least nine months of camera footage and at least 1,545 pages of classified discovery — plus more content that has yet to be turned over, she noted.

The fact that the case centers on classified records also adds complexity, the judge wrote, citing the need for the parties to review the sensitive documents "under appropriate safeguards and following resolution of pending logistics."

Cannon's schedule laid out dozens of procedural deadlines ahead of the spring 2024 trial. The next crop of deadlines concern a section of the federal statute that governs how classified information will be handled. The government has until Sept. 7 to turn over relevant classified documents to the defense in discovery. 

The case in Florida marks the first time a president, current or former, has faced criminal charges from the federal government. But it's the second set of criminal charges Trump has faced since launching his latest White House bid — and it may not be the last.

In New York, Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to an alleged hush money scheme to bury allegations of his extramarital affairs.

Meanwhile, Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis has signaled she could soon seek indictments in her investigation of efforts by Trump and his allies to interfere in Georgia's 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to President Joe Biden.

Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the federal probe into the classified documents stored at Trump's Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, is also heading a separate probe into the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, transfer of presidential power.

That criminal probe appears to be rapidly moving toward charges: Trump announced Tuesday that the special counsel informed him that he is a target in the investigation.