REPORT: Trump Trial May Not Happen Until 2025; Here’s Why

Prosecutors of former President Donald Trump in the ongoing classified documents case may be waiting a long time to see the conclusion of their efforts. Already, court watchers are predicting that procedural delays and challenges may extend the actual start of a trial into 2025.

Brian Greer, a former attorney with the CIA, told The Hill that the former president has all the cards in his favor when it comes to stonewalling the case against him which carries 37 counts of mishandling classified documents and obstruction of justice:

“It’s going to be very difficult to bring a case like this to trial within the year, given the highly sensitive classified information at issue,” Brian Greer, a former CIA attorney, told The Hill.

“Plus, Trump is going to seek every delay possible. If Judge [Aileen] Cannon goes along with these delaying tactics, we’ll be looking at a trial in 2025 at the earliest.”

Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, has previously sided with the former president during initial steps taken by the FBI to launch a sweeping search of Mar-a-Lago after the discovery of the documents. Already, President Trump’s legal team has laid the groundwork for challenges to seek the entire case dismissed based on prosecutorial overreach and witness tampering.

Brandon Van Grack, a former top national security director at the Justice Department, said the decision by prosecutors to focus on the most damning documents is a strategy to encourage a speedier trial, though it remains to be seen if Judge Cannon will buy that argument.

“These appear to be even more sensitive than your typical retention case, and what I would think from that is that the intelligence community very much is also focused on the fact that they view the conduct here as something that was potentially harmful and damaging to national security. So they’re taking it just as seriously as the Department of Justice is taking it,” he told The Hill.

The case now heads to its discovery phase, where Trump’s attorneys have promised aggressive depositions against federal agents who may introduce bias that could taint the case beyond prosecution. Alina Habba, an attorney for the former president, suggested her team may question, for example, why the FBI ordered Mar-a-Lago staff to shut off security cameras during their raid of the president’s compound.