Trump Criminal Trial Could Be Pushed To NEXT YEAR

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has filed a motion to move Donald Trump's criminal trial for alleged Espionage Act violations from August to December, but new reports suggest that the case could be delayed well beyond the end of this year. Given the complexities of dealing with classified documents that must be reviewed by all of those involved, the case could end up getting pushed all the way to Spring of 2024, or possibly even later. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains why that might not be such a bad idea.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to a report from the Guardian this week, the document trial against Donald Trump might be postponed until the spring of 2024. Now, judge Eileen Cannon, of course, has already set the court date for August, right? I think we're looking at what, August 14th I think it is. So August 14th is when Judge Cannon, the judge overseeing it, says, look, I want to do this on August 14th, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor says, I don't want to do it on August 14th. I would rather do it in mid-December. Can you give me an extra four months? Now, judge Cannon has not given a ruling yet on whether or not to postpone it until December, but part of the reason that Jack Smith is asking to postpone it to December, which for the record will not happen, Donald Trump already has another criminal trial on the docket for December. So Judge Cannon, even if she wanted to comply with, uh, the motion from Jack Smith, she couldn't do it because Trump already has another criminal trial coming up in December.

So it would have to be after that. But the reason, the big reason Jack Smith wants to postpone this trial is because you have a lot of different people, mostly those working on the defense side that do not have security clearances for obvious reasons. They don't work for the government. They don't need security clearances. So we are in the process right now of getting all of Donald Trump's lawyers this clearance so that they can even view the evidence against them. What's also being worked out right now are the rules for the trial, because the classified documents obviously are going to be a big part of the evidence. I mean, they are the evidence, but you can't just go into a courtroom and show jurors, show the reporters, show the witnesses in the room. You can't just show them classified documents. And that's something that everybody seems to have, I guess, forgotten about or maybe didn't realize at first.

But when these classified documents are blown up and shown on the big screen, they're in the courtroom, you've got a room full of people that legally aren't allowed to see that. You've got 12 jurors over here if they're using a 12 person jury that legally can't see it either. So we have all these procedures that we have to go through. We have documents that may have to be declassified before they can be shown in court. Others will have to be heavily redacted to make them presentable to the court and the jury and the judge, and of course the people in the courtroom. So this is not going to be a quick process. This is going to take a very, very long time to get everybody credentialed to the point where they can either view it or get the

Documents edited to the point where they can be viewed. And a report from The Guardian this week, of course, says that Spring 2024 is probably the earliest that we would see Donald Trump walk into Judge Cannon's federal courtroom because this stuff takes time. And honestly, that may be the best thing for this case. You know, when Judge Cannon initially said the date, I explained why it's worse for the prosecution to have a court date that was 55 days out versus the defense. So it would be better for the defense, it would be better for Trump's chances of getting convicted if we push this thing out, you know, even to spring of next year. I'm okay with that.