Donald Trump is demanding that the classified documents case be delayed until Nov. 2024, presumably after the election, because Judge Aileen Cannon's district doesn't have a classified facility in which to view the documents.
Lawfare's senior editor Roger Parloff explained in a thread on X that Judge Cannon's "northern division" of the Southern District of Florida lacks a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) – a safe space to view the highly sensitive material involved in the case.
In July, she asked that one be built and expedited. If the process had begun on Aug. 1 it would theoretically be finished Nov. 1, 2023, according to estimates.
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Trump's lawyers are complaining that the case now must be delayed for a year because they were promised all of the paperwork "on day one" and, due to the lack of a secure facility, the documents aren't actually available to the team.
"The March 4, 2023 trial date in the District of Columbia, and the underlying schedule in that case, currently require President Trump and his lawyers to be in two places at once," the filing complains.
"And months after the Office's representation to the Court, discovery is not complete in this case — including with respect to the classified documents at issue in more than 25 percent of the 793(e) counts in the Superseding Indictment. The ongoing non-compliance cannot be written off as a series of 'brief delays' or 'slightly longer than anticipated timeframe.' Nevertheless, clinging to an unprecedented and now untenable trial date, the Office presses the Court to continue with an accelerated schedule that the prosecutors have not followed and that in all likelihood will require multiple rounds of CIPA litigation."
Trump's lawyers "determined that the current schedule—even beyond the Classified Information Procedures Act litigation—is "unworkable," quoted Parloff.
One of the delays has been of Trump's own making, with lawyers refusing to go through with the process needed to obtain the security classification necessary to see the documents taken from the White House.
"This motion appears very similar to one already rejected by Judge Chutkan in DC," explained Parloff. "It objects to the standard ex-parte CIPA procedure for redacting classified documents (judge meets with each side alone) and says the process can't go forward at all until the defense has all discovery."
There are three documents that are so top secret that they can't be viewed outside of Washington, D.C.
