Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a motion on Wednesday to request his classified documents trial be moved to “at least mid-November 2024.”
In this case, Trump faces 40 charges alleging he illegally kept classified documents after he left the White House. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges. The trial date was originally scheduled for May 20, 2024, according to NPR.
The new proposed trial date from Trump’s legal team would push the trial to begin after the conclusion of the general election.
In the motion filed by Trump’s legal team, they request to move the trial date “in light of additional, ongoing discovery failures.” The filing said that “discovery is not complete in this case” and called the current trial date “untenable.”
The filing also referenced another trial set to begin on March 4, 2024. In this case, Trump faces federal charges for election interference. That trial date and “the underlying schedule in that case, currently require President Trump and his lawyers to be in two places at once.”
“The Special Counsel’s Office has not provided some of the most basic discovery in the case,” the motion said. “Given the current schedule, we cannot understate the prejudice to President Trump arising from his lack of access to these critical materials months after they should have been produced.”
Last week, the prosecutors said that they recognized that there was a “slightly longer than anticipated timeframe,” and they denied “delaying the production of evidence in the case,” according to The Associated Press.
The prosecutors say “much of the outstanding classified evidence” will be handed over by Friday, AP reported.
“This production will include certain materials that defendants have described as outstanding, including audio recordings of interviews and information related to the classification reviews conducted in the case,” the prosecutors wrote, according to PBS.
This is the second time Trump’s legal team has requested the trial be moved, according to CNN.
In July, his legal team filed a motion that said, “There is simply no question any trial of this action during the pendency of a Presidential election will impact both the outcome of that election and, importantly, the ability of the defendants to obtain a fair trial,” per CNN. The trial was not moved after this request in July.