Judge Aileen Cannon, who coincidentally was appointed by Donald Trump, announced Tuesday afternoon that she is indefinitely postponing his classified documents case in Florida.
The case was originally scheduled to begin on May 20. Tuesday’s written decision says that that start date is being vacated due to concerns about classified evidence, but Cannon makes no indication of when the trial will be placed back on the calendar.
“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and [Classified Information Procedures Act] issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury,” Cannon’s decision reads.
In other words, Cannon says the case must be delayed because of the number of pretrial motions that remain unresolved. There’s just one problem with that justification: the motions remain unresolved because she has failed to resolve them. Cannon has dragged her feet and given concessions to Trump’s legal team at seemingly every opportunity thus far.
The latest decision means that Trump is all but certain to avoid trial in the classified documents case until after the November election. If he wins, he could instruct the Department of Justice to drop the case altogether, or even try to preemptively pardon himself. Cannon has set two hearings for May 22 on Trump’s motions to dismiss the trial entirely.
In court Tuesday during Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, some new and unusual nicknames were entered into the legal record during adult film actress Stormy Daniels’s testimony.
Trump attorney Susan Necheles displayed a tweet from Daniels dated November 9, 2022 where Daniels states “I don’t owe him shit and I’ll never give that orange turd a dime.”
Now, “orange turd” is officially part of New York case law.
In another instance, a Truth Social post containing Trump’s insults towards Daniels were entered into the public record by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, specifically the words “Horseface” and “SleazeBag.” Daniels said that the terms referred to her.
Early on in Daniels’s testimony, she noted that the former president always called her “honeybunch,” and that she’d put his phone calls to her on speakerphone.
These aren’t the first colorful nicknames to be entered into the record during this trial. Last week, Trump attorney Todd Blanche displayed Twitter (now X) posts in court where Trump’s former attorney and fixer-turned adversary, Michael Cohen, calls the former president “Von ShitzInPantz,” and also refers to him as a “racist jackass who referred to African nations as ‘shithole countries.’”
Trump is facing 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime for paying off Daniels to cover up their affair ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He has pleaded not guilty. Earlier Tuesday, Daniels’s testimony revealed several salacious details about the affair, including Trump comparing the adult film actress to his daughter Ivanka and an excuse that Daniels used in one instance to avoid sex with the former president.
Stormy Daniels used an all-too-familiar line to get out of having sex with Donald Trump.
Recounting one instance in 2007 when the pair met at a bungalow in Los Angeles, Daniels testified Tuesday that Trump had once again tried to pressure her into sex, including putting his hand on her leg. But she knew how to shake him off.
“I told him I was on my period,” Daniels told the court.
Daniels also recalled several other sexual encounters with Trump, at times diving into great detail, which appeared to bother even Judge Juan Merchan. Those moments included their infamous initial 2006 encounter at a hotel suite, in which Daniels claimed Trump goaded her into having sex under the guise that he would advance her film career by landing her a spot on his hit reality TV show, The Apprentice. Daniels described the tryst as brief and condomless.
“I thought you were serious about what you wanted,” she recalled Trump telling her at the time, before reportedly climbing on top of her.
After rejecting Trump a year later at the bungalow, she recalled Trump calling her to reveal that he wasn’t able to get her on The Apprentice as he had promised.
Daniels’s get-out-of-jail-free card is a lighthearted anecdote in an otherwise heavy description of a relationship that stemmed from what she described as an “imbalance of power.” Daniels has previously said she was mad at herself for not seeing right away that Trump didn’t want to help her career and just wanted to have sex with her, and told the court Tuesday that she hates Trump.
Trump is accused of using Cohen to sweep an affair with Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential........