Judge sets tentative trial date for Trump documents case

Donald Trump’s criminal trial for hoarding military secrets at Mar-a-Lago has a starting date — Aug. 14 — but don’t expect it to hold.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon bookmarked the last two weeks in August for the historic trial, part of an omnibus order setting some early ground rules and deadlines for the case. That would represent a startlingly rapid pace for a case that is expected to be complicated and require lengthy pretrial wrangling over extraordinarily sensitive classified secrets.

But a review of Cannon’s criminal cases since she took the bench in late 2020 suggests this is standard practice for the Florida-based judge. She typically sets trial dates six to eight weeks from the start of a case, only to allow weeks- or months-long delays as issues arise and the parties demand more time to prepare. While her order on Tuesday starts the clock on a slew of important pretrial matters in the Trump case, it’s not likely to resemble anything close to the timeframe that will ultimately govern the case.

Cannon’s order comes after a weekend in which Trump continued to raise eyebrows — and certainly catch the ear of his prosecutors — with a Fox News interview in which he acknowledged intentionally withholding documents from the federal government, claiming he wanted to sift through them for personal items. It was the latest twist in a shifting and meandering narrative Trump continues to tell about his handling of the files, which will surely become part of the pattern prosecutors intend to highlight at trial.

Trump is also under indictment in Manhattan for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to a porn star. The trial in that case is scheduled for March 25, 2024.