Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at 40 Wall Street after his court hearing to set the date of his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments related to extramarital affairs in New York City, March 25, 2024.
Charly Triballeau | AFP | Getty Images
Donald Trump lost two separate attempts Thursday afternoon to dismiss criminal charges against him in his cases in Florida and Georgia.
In federal court in Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon rejected Trump’s attempt to drop charges against him for allegedly mishandling hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House.
In a brief order, Cannon wrote that Trump’s argument, based on his interpretation of the Presidential Records Act, did not provide a sufficient basis for dismissal.
That ruling came about two hours after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee rejected Trump’s attempt to dismiss his election interference case in Georgia on the grounds that it violated his free speech rights.
The two losses came a day after New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan rejected a request from Trump to postpone his upcoming hush money trial.
Jury selection in this case is expected to begin in less than two weeks. It is the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to go to trial.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has aggressively sought to drop all of his criminal cases, or at least delay them beyond the November election. In the hush money case alone, he made eight attempts to delay the process.
However, Thursday’s developments were not a complete victory for Trump’s prosecutors.
Cannon’s decision was also a setback for special prosecutor Jack Smith, who earlier this week criticized the judge’s guidelines for proposed jury instructions.
Smith said Cannon’s guidelines, which required parties to write jury instructions interpreting the Presidential Records Act, were based on a false legal premise that falsely gave credibility to Trump’s claims.
Smith urged Cannon to decide quickly whether she will accept those jury instructions so he has time to appeal her decision.
Cannon called the request “unprecedented and unfair” on Thursday.
The judge wrote that her order on jury instructions “should not be misconstrued” as the final word on a key part of the case.
Rather, she wrote, it was “a genuine attempt to better understand the competing positions of the parties in a complex case in the context of the upcoming trial.”
However, Cannon added that Smith is still free to pursue “any appeal opportunity he deems appropriate, to the fullest extent permitted by law.”
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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2024-04-04 19:52:44
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