'Never seen': Legal experts fear Judge Cannon could scrap trial at unusual court hearing
Donald Trump's lawyers were attending hearings in District Judge Aileen Cannon's courtroom Wednesday — on the same day they had been scheduled to question jurors in the case they reportedly fear the most.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin this week in the Florida federal court, but Cannon instead will hear arguments in a long-shot effort by one of Trump's co-defendants to dismiss the charges after the judge postponed the trial indefinitely to settle various legal issues, reported the Washington Post.
“The court appears to be giving the defendant every opportunity to avoid a trial,” said veteran Miami defense attorney Philip Reizenstein. “In 37 years of practice in South Florida, I have never seen a judge give so much consideration to scheduling a case in a way that benefits the defendant.”
Attorneys for Mar-a-Lago employee Walt Nauta will argue the prosecution against him is "discriminatory and vindictive" because others who helped Trump move boxes of government documents were not charged, and they will ask for the case to be dismissed because prosecutors failed to clearly state in the indictment which laws the co-defendants allegedly broke.
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Cannon has generally sided with the government so far in individual rulings, such as rejecting two Trump motions to dismiss the case and ruling for prosecutors on issues related to how classified information is handled at trial, but the judge's decisions have repeatedly slowed down the case, which at this point seems unlikely to go to trial before the November election.
Defense attorneys can file unlimited motions for dismissal, although legal experts say it's unusual that Cannon has held so many hearings on motions by Trump and his co-defendants because judges typically rule in those without holding sessions in court.
Reizenstein said the former president's strategy is obvious, and that Trump clearly holes he can be re-elected president and then appoint an attorney general who would order the Justice Department to end special Jack Smith's prosecutions against him.