Former President Donald Trump's legal team is objecting to the jury questionnaire proposed in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, according to a new filing made public on Wednesday.
"The prosecution's purported concern about 'insufficient time to implement' jury selection measures is entirely illusory and based exclusively on the partisan talismanic significance they have assigned to May 20, 2024," the filing stated.
The filing further argues that Smith is trying to prosecute by "baseball rules."
"Apparently believing that the case is governed by baseball rules, the Office has taken another swing at maintaining a trial date that was set based on the Office’s misrepresentations regarding the timing and nature of discovery," the brief states. "This motion is every bit as much a whiff, and therefore strike two."
May 20 is the current trial date set by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. However, Cannon, an appointee of Trump who has been widely accused of making decisions calculated to sway the trial in his favor, is widely expected by legal experts to push out the trial date further, possibly making the trial take place after the 2024 presidential election.
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The case, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, concerns Trump's retention of highly classified national defense information at his country club in South Florida, where he allegedly ordered subordinates like his body man Walt Nauta, also included in the indictment, to move around boxes between multiple unsecured locations like ballrooms and bathrooms to prevent authorities trying to retrieve the documents from finding them.
A superseding indictment also charged Trump, Nauta, and property manager Carlos de Oliveira with conspiring to try to destroy security footage of the boxes being moved around.
The Mar-a-Lago case is one of two brought by Smith, the other being the D.C. charges for Trump's plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That case is currently on hold as the Supreme Court decides whether to make an expedited review of Trump's claim to have presidential immunity from prosecution.
