Trump seeks to use NY hush money trial to delay criminal case over classified document handling in FL
CNN
Former president Donald Trump is using his first criminal trial set, to begin Monday in New York, to delay facing a jury over more serious federal charges in Florida.
Former President Donald Trump is using his first criminal trial, set to begin Monday in New York, to try to delay facing a jury over more serious federal charges in Florida. In the latest effort to capitalize on the colliding court schedules, Trump asked US District Judge Aileen Cannon on Saturday to push back a May deadline for reviewing classified evidence in the criminal case over his alleged mishandling of classified and sensitive government information stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump can’t meet the deadline, his lawyers said in a filing, because he’ll be on trial for state charges in Manhattan. That trial — over allegations that Trump falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to cover up an alleged affair with an adult film star before the 2016 election — could last into June. But Trump and his primary defense lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, can’t be in two places at once, they said. “President Trump has a constitutional right to be present at the trial in New York and, as a result, cannot participate in this work relating to important parts of his defense,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing to Cannon. As the former president’s legal team steps into the Manhattan courtroom Monday, work in the Mar-a-Lago documents case will grind to a near-total halt. The classified documents case has stalled in Florida federal court, and Trump’s defense team has already dramatically reduced the amount of time they’ve spent working on the criminal case over the last six weeks.
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