Judge Cannon could further delay trial by allowing Trump to 'graymail' Jack Smith

Judge Aileen Cannon has more opportunities on the horizon to drag out Donald Trump's trial well into next year, as the former president seeks re-election.

The Florida-based federal judge has taken a leisurely pace in the lead-up to Trump's trial in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and experts told Politico there's virtually no chance the trial will begin as scheduled on May 20 due to her unwillingness to set short deadlines for reviewing evidence in accordance with the Classified Information Procedures Act.

“The signals are of a court that is proceeding slowly and methodically through the process,” said Brandon Van Grack, a former national security prosecutor who was part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. “In order to have a trial by May, the court would just need to push the parties on a tighter deadline.”

The trial is expected to take four weeks or more, and if it starts after May 20 it could overlap with the Republican convention, set to begin July 15 in Milwaukee, and delaying it until August, September or October – after Trump presumably wins the GOP nomination – would raise the political stakes to almost unbearable levels in the weeks before the Nov. 5, 2024, election.

“The Department of Justice is trying to do everything in its power ahead of trial to move as expeditiously as possible,” Van Grack said, "and the court is just reluctant to or resistant to any efforts to expedite the process.”

Trump or even one of his two co-defendants – personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago facilities manager Carlos de Oliveira – could slow things down by asking the court to force prosecutors to gather more evidence than they think might be relevant, and if any of that evidence is classified they might require multiple rounds of litigation to determine what could be used at trial.

“With three defendants all having the opportunity to make motions, it could be that at least one of the defense teams decides to move to use a lot of classified information as evidence,” said David Aaron, a former Justice Department national security prosecutor.

Prosecutors will also probably ask Cannon to allow the "silent witness rule" to admit some evidence without it being shown or read aloud in court to protect it from public disclosure, or even allow some witnesses to appear in disguise or obscured behind a divider set up in court, which Trump, his co-defendants and the media will likely oppose – setting off additional litigation.

That would then force the government to choose between making sensitive information public or giving up some elements of their case – a choice sometimes called graymail.

“There are valid reasons [to object] from a press perspective and a defense perspective, but it also does provide an opportunity for mischief by the defense as part of the graymail problem that CIPA is supposed to thwart,” Aaron said. “CIPA will thwart the graymail problem, but that does sometimes take time.”