Former President Donald Trump's lawyers asked a Florida federal judge on Thursday to delay his trial in the classified documents case until after the November 2024 election, citing a lack of access to necessary materials.
Trump wants the trial delayed until "at least mid-November 2024," which would place it just after next year's presidential election, giving him a potential shot to be the president-elect at the time of the trial's start if he were to beat his likely opponent, President Joe Biden.
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The request comes as his legal team has complained about the amount of classified evidence it's been able to sift through in the case as well as its workload to manage three other indictments against the president this year alone. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has scheduled the classified documents case for May 20, 2024.
Trump's team "only has access to a small, temporary facility in Miami” to see the classified materials, according to a 12-page filing from the defense Thursday. The facility must be visited in person while managing other hearing dates for Trump's separate case over his alleged attempt to subvert the 2020 election, which is slated for trial in early March.
“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,” Trump’s attorneys, Christopher Kise and Todd Blanche, wrote in the filing.
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It's not clear when the court will rule on Trump's request to delay. Cannon is an appointee of Trump who some critics have feared would be more deferential to the former president in his case, though she has rejected previous efforts to delay proceedings.
Investigators recovered 325 classified materials from Mar-a-Lago as part of more than 11,000 total White House documents that were discovered by the government at the estate. Of those, special counsel Jack Smith has charged Trump with willfully retaining 32 documents that contained national defense information, in violation of the Espionage Act.