Florida judge hears bids to dismiss Trump documents charges
AFP :
A Florida judge held hearings on Wednesday on bids by former president Donald Trump and his co-defendants to dismiss the charges they face for allegedly mishandling classified documents.
The hearings were held in Fort Pierce, Florida, before District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has indefinitely postponed Trump’s criminal trial in the case.
Lawyers for Trump, who is seeking to recapture the White House in November, and his co-defendants — his valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira — have filed multiple motions seeking to have the case thrown out.
Trump pleaded not guilty in Florida in June to the federal charges of unlawfully retaining national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements.
He kept the classified files — which included records from the Pentagon, CIA and National Security Agency — unsecured at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and thwarted official efforts to retrieve them, according to the indictment.
Trump — who is currently on trial in New York, accused in a separate case of falsifying business records to pay hush money to a porn star — did not attend Wednesday’s proceedings.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, first heard a motion filed by Nauta claiming that his prosecution was “vindictive” because he refused to cooperate with the investigation into Trump.
The judge did not immediately rule on the motion or on a second dismissal motion brought on behalf of all three defendants. Previous dismissal motions have been denied.
Wednesday’s hearings were the first since Cannon, on May 7, indefinitely postponed the trial of the former president, which had been scheduled to begin this month.
Cannon said the planned May 20 start date was not possible because of the number of pre-trial motions before the court.
The postponement was a major setback for special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, and makes it unlikely the case will be heard before the presidential election — now less than six months away.