Don’t delay Trump’s classified documents trial

Cook County is no stranger to long-delayed trials. As far back as 2020, journalist Frank Main reported in the Sun-Times that detainees were waiting much as 10 years for their cases to be resolved.

No one pretends that’s a model of justice. Nor would it be a model of justice to let former President Donald Trump unnecessarily delay his trial over his alleged hoarding of top-secret classified documents until after the November 2024 election.

Through his lawyers, Trump on Monday night argued that he can’t properly defend himself at a trial while also running for president. But going along with that argument and delaying the moment when the gavel drops would crack open the door to letting any candidate for political office, or anyone with an important job, say they just don’t have time for a trial. People who provide needed family care could arguably say the same.

Moreover, Trump’s argument is undercut by his history of stonewalling and delaying legal proceedings against him, until his opponents are exhausted or the facts on the ground have changed. Over the years, Trump has been involved in thousands of legal proceedings.  

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the indictment against Trump in June, already has said Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta were trying to create an “unnecessary” delay by citing a scheduling conflict for one of Nauta’s lawyers as a reason to put off a hearing. The lawyers on both sides finally settled on a short delay, agreeing to hold the next hearing on July 18. Smith wants the trial to begin on Dec. 11.

Trump also argues it would be impossible to seat an impartial jury, presumably because of his name recognition and news coverage of the case. But that won’t change after the 2024 election, and countless other defendants in the past also have been well-known. They didn’t get to put off their trials indefinitely.

At the moment, Trump, according to polls, is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. So there’s another clear political motivation: Delaying the trial until after the election would give Trump, should he win, a chance to deep-six the prosecution by remaking the U.S. Department of Justice, including the appointment of a new attorney general. Or he could try to pardon himself, taking the nation into uncharted constitutional waters.

Trump has said he wants this case resolved “very quickly,” but the evidence shows otherwise.

Trump’s calendar also is filling up with legal dates, for a civil trial set for October in New York on alleged fraud at his businesses and a criminal case involving alleged hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, the porn star. Other investigations are ongoing, into his alleged role in trying to overturn Georgia’s results in the 2020 presidential election, which a grand jury empaneled on Tuesday is likely to take up; and in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, also being overseen by Smith.

The Justice Department, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, has been criticized for helping bring the documents case to this point by being slow to investigate. Trump and Nauta, Trump’s valet, were not charged until last month; the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-lago estate in August 2022 to recover the documents.

Were the case further along, some critics say, the date of the upcoming elections would be less of an issue. But that’s not a reason for unnecessary additional delay now.

A trial like this one will be a slog, as lawyers pore over discovery, file flurries of motions and try to squeeze in dates on court dockets. A way to protect the secrecy of important classified documents at the heart of the case must be worked out, and Trump’s lawyers need to get security clearances. Even a serious effort to move forward with all dispatch might not get the case to the finish line by the election. But that’s no reason not to get started. Americans deserve to know what Trump did with national secrets.

Instead of trying to delay the trial, Trump ought to insist on speeding things up to get the case to a disposition before campaigning starts in earnest.

It’s what he said he wants. The courts should make it happen.

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