Former US President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday demanded that the start of the trial over classified documents that were found at his Mar-a-lago, Florida, mansion be postponed until after the 2024 presidential election. Initially, the Florida court that will have to try Trump had set the start of the proceedings for August, but the special prosecutor who is handling the investigation into Trump, Jack Smith, had requested that it be postponed to December. Trump’s lawyers argue that neither date is acceptable, given that according to them the process would compromise the proper conduct of the electoral campaign (Trump is the main candidate in the Republican primaries).
Trump was indicted in June in the classified documents case, per 37 counts involving the violation of seven federal laws, to which he pleaded not guilty. The investigation for which Trump was indicted was launched following a request made to the Justice Department by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), an agency of the United States government that deals with preserving the most important government and historical documents of the country.
According to the agency, at the end of his presidential mandate Trump had taken away from the White House various government documents – some of which are indicated as “classified”, i.e. confidential and covered by secrecy and which cannot be disclosed at all – in violation of the Presidential Records Act, a law that requires US presidents to deliver all documents produced by their administration to the National Archives.
Trump was also indicted in another separate case, an illegal payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, whose trial will begin in March 2024. But the indictment in the classified documents case has a whole other dimension. First of all because Trump is accused of having committed federal crimes, and it is the first time in the history of the United States that similar accusations have been made against a former president. And secondly because in this trial the evidence against Trump is considered extremely solid, also due to the recording of a conversation in which Trump had in fact admitted that he had kept confidential documents in the Florida villa and that he was aware of the fact that those documents were confidential and should not have been in his possession.