Trump aims to use the New York hush money trial to postpone the Florida criminal case related to handling secret documents.

 

In an attempt to postpone answering to a jury for more serious federal accusations in Florida, former President Donald Trump is exploiting his first criminal trial, which is scheduled to start on Monday in New York.

Trump asked US District Judge Aileen Cannon on Saturday to extend the deadline for reviewing classified evidence in the criminal case concerning his alleged mishandling of classified and sensitive government information kept at his Mar-a-Lago estate, in yet another attempt to take advantage of the colliding court schedules.

According to a filing from his attorneys, Trump is unable to fulfill the deadline since he will be tried in Manhattan on state charges. This trial, which concerns claims that Trump fabricated financial records to hide payments for hush money in order to hide an alleged relationship with an adult film star prior to the 2016 election, may go into June.

However, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Trump's principal defense attorneys, asserted that they are unable to be in two places at once.

"President Trump cannot participate in this work relating to important parts of his defense because he has a constitutional right to be present at the trial in New York," Trump's attorneys wrote in a submission to Cannon.

The Mar-a-Lago documents case will come to a near complete standstill on Monday when the former president's legal team enters the Manhattan courthouse. Over the last six weeks, Trump's defense team has drastically cut down on the amount of time they've spent working on the criminal case, and the secret materials case has stagnated in a federal court in Florida.

In addition to having few other deadlines on her calendar and an unresolved backlog of legal problems, Cannon, the case manager, has not yet scheduled a trial.

Moreover, it is challenging for lawyers to take on any work outside of Florida due to the delicate nature of the information handled in this case. According to those acquainted with Trump's legal team, the next stage of their work necessitates lengthy meetings between Trump and his legal team in a secure facility in the rural Florida town of Fort Pierce.

Meeting the deadline to review the evidence, according to the filing on Saturday, "will require lengthy classified submissions and extensive time in a SCIF to prepare and discuss those submissions, which is time President Trump and his attorneys simply do not have during the trial that is about to begin in New York," according to the attorneys for the president.

In an effort to maintain momentum in the Florida case, federal prosecutors from the special counsel's office made it apparent to Cannon that they thought Trump's defense team ought to have previously been ready with their claims regarding classified documents.

Prosecutor Jay Bratt stated in a March hearing that "they have had the classified discovery for months now... they are well steeped in it" and that the dispute over secret papers is "what leads to how the case can be presented at trial."

The special counsel's office stated that they "cannot agree" with the request to postpone deadlines, according to a filing made by Trump's att

orneys on Saturday.