No trial date set in Donald Trump classified documents case

July 18 (UPI) -- The timing for former President Donald Trump's classified documents trial is on hold as the judge in Tuesday's pretrial hearing promised to issue a written order "promptly."

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ended Tuesday's two-hour hearing in Fort Pierce, Fla., without setting a trial date, but signaled she would likely push the start date beyond mid-December as proposed by federal prosecutors.

Prosecutors and Trump's legal team have sparred over the classified documents trial date, despite both requesting delays to the tentative August start. While prosecutors want the trial to start in December, Trump's lawyers argued for an indefinite delay, pushing the trial past the November 2024 presidential election.

During Tuesday's hearing, Judge Cannon appeared skeptical of arguments that Trump would not get a fair trial while running for president.

"Won't that just continue?" Cannon asked Trump attorney Christopher Kise when he referred to the intense publicity the case would attract before the election. Cannon instructed Kise to present other reasons, such as legal issues, for why the trial should not be expedited.

Instead, Cannon focused on arguments related to the large amount of discovery in the case, which she described as "voluminous," and hinted that the trial could not start by the mid-December date, proposed by prosecutors.

Lawyers for Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta asked the court last week to delay the case until after the 2024 presidential election, stating that beginning a case "of this magnitude within six months of indictment is unreasonable, telling and would result in a miscarriage of justice."

Special Counsel Jack Smith last month had called for the case to be postponed from August to December, noting the sensitive nature of the classified materials in the case would require special considerations.

Trump's legal team requested the longer delay, citing several other ongoing cases involving the two men, the fact that Trump and Nauta, his aide, would be on the campaign trail and potential difficulty seating a jury in December as the campaign would be ramping up.

Lawyers for Smith, however, pushed back on the defense team's requests, saying it "borders on the frivolous."

"There is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the defendants provide none," assistant special counsel David Harbach wrote.

Smith called Tuesday's proceedings a "critical step" in getting the high-profile case moving forward as the two sides will seek to reach an agreement on how classified documents will be handled under the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Trump and Nauta face more than three dozen charges combined for mishandling classified documents and obstructing federal officials in trying to retrieve them. Both have entered not-guilty pleas.

Court filings released ahead of the indictment showed that the government had taken more than 320 documents with classification markings previously held by Trump. Because of the sensitive nature of the documents, Trump's legal team will need clearance to view the documents.

The government issued a filing Monday requesting Cannon to order that Trump, Nauta and their legal teams agree not to share any classified material before the prosecution is able to look over the evidence during pretrial discovery.

The decision on what the government will be required to share throughout the process will be left up to Cannon, a Trump appointee to the bench.

Her decision earlier in the case to allow Trump to have an independent reviewer, known as a special master, to examine all the documents taken by the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home that was seen as highly favorable for Trump was ultimately overturned by an appeals court.