Former President Donald Trump has secured a victory after his classified documents trial has been postponed, Axios reported. Special counsel Jack Smith has proposed a new July 8 start date that would take Trump off the campaign trail around the time of the Republican National Convention.
The former president is facing four criminal trials. Despite his many decades in the public eye, it seems more than a coincidence that his legal troubles have only surfaced as he runs for president in 2024.
One of the trials he's facing includes charges Smith brought over the alleged mishandling classified materials in Trump's Florida home. Smith was originally gunning for the trial to begin on May 20 in the thick of the GOP primary.
However, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon recently ruled in favor of Trump to push it back. Despite this decision, Smith is still trying to make the trial coincide with important events on the campaign timeline.
Smith's original date would have come at the tail end of primary season. Now his second choice for July 8 lines up with the GOP convention, which is scheduled for July 12-15, Fox News reported.
Meanwhile, Trump's team has rightly pointed out that the trial should be delayed for the GOP frontrunner and likely nominee for the 2024 presidential election. His legal team insisted that a "fair trial cannot be conducted this year in a manner consistent with the Constitution."
Trump is also juggling three other trials at the same time with the same challenges. The next on the schedule is the so-called hush money case in New York which is set to begin in April 15.
That case was already bumped from its March 25 start date after the prosecution dumped a trove of documents at the last minute, the Associated Press reported. Trump's legal team attempted to have the case dismissed, but that motion was rejected.
Notably, federal prosecutors examined the case but never pursued it until now, once again hinting that the timing may be intentional. The case contends that payments to former porn star that may have been miscategorized given the timing near Trump's first presidential election in 2016.
In the midst of these concurrent legal battles, Trump has also been put under an exapended gag order in the New York trial at the request of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump is expected to remain silent about his case as he campaigns for president.
Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said this "never happens," according to The Hill. "This is so unusual," the attorney said Wednesday.
The gag order was expanded because Trump has spoken out against the judge and his family's hatred for the former president. Trump believes this it is nothing more than an "illegal, un-American, unConstitutional" effort to silence him.
It was done to "deprive" him of his right "First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponization of Law Enforcement," Trump said on Truth Social. He blamed President Joe Biden and others for "obsessively trying to persecute me, while everyone knows I have done nothing wrong!"
Smith and others have gone after Trump somehow at the most opportune time to take out a political opponent. This is questionable at best, but at least the delays may thwart any intentional effort to interfere in Trump's campaign.
