https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/26/trump-trials-tracker-latest-news/
Florida: Federal classified documents caseReturn to menuThe details: Trump faces 40 federal charges over accusations that he kept top-secret government documents at Mar-a-Lago — his home and private club — and thwarted government demands to return them.Planned trial date: Postponed indefinitely
Last week: The trial was supposed to begin last Monday, but instead of jury selection, U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon held two hearings on long-shot requests by Trump co-defendant Waltine “Walt” Nauta to dismiss the case — the kind of hearings we are becoming accustomed to in this case. Cannon tends not to rule from the bench, and she did not do so last week.Separately, several documents were unsealed describing prosecutors’ suspicions and shedding more light on how the classified-documents investigation unfolded in 2022.
Trump used those newly public documents to falsely suggest that standard FBI paperwork describing the rules for using deadly force somehow meant agents who searched his home in 2022 had been given special authority to shoot him.That isn’t accurate, not by a long shot. On Friday night, special counsel Jack Smith said such statements endanger FBI agents on the case, and took the unusual step of asking Cannon to impose a new condition of release on Trump: that he not make such misleading accusations again.While not couched in the language of a gag order, Smith’s request is an extension of the ongoing battles over what Trump says outside court about what’s happening inside court. (He is already under limited gag orders in the New York trial and in the pending D.C. federal case about election obstruction.)Smith’s new filing may draw Cannon into the legal fray over Trump’s public comments — an issue that, until now, she has not had to confront.
