Classified documents judge defends more hearings after being accused of slow-walking Trump case

Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversees Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida, has defended her decision to hold additional hearings in the case.

Cannon is seeking more evidence about the language in the FBI search warrant that was used to seize classified documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022, she wrote in a court filing on Thursday. Trump’s lawyers have argued the language was vague, and Cannon agreed there were “ambiguities” in her latest filing.

Trump has been accused of willfully keeping classified documents at his private Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. When the FBI searched his estate, they found boxes of documents stored in a shower, a ballroom and his bedroom. He was indicted a year later on charges related to keeping the documents and thwarting government attempts to get them back. Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges.

Cannon’s ruling comes just hours before the first presidential debate of 2024, where Trump’s legal battles are expected to be front and center.

In her Thursday filing, Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020, also pushed back on special counsel Jack Smith, who “vigorously opposes” her call for another hearing, according to the filing.

Smith has previously called for Cannon to dismiss bids by Trump’s team over concerns that they will cause a “substantial delay.” Smith has also questioned her legal judgment, at one point saying one of her orders on the case was based on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”

“There is a difference between a resource-wasting and delay-producing ‘mini-trial,’ on the one hand, and an evidentiary hearing geared to adjudicating the contested factual and legal issues on a given pre-trial motion to suppress,” Cannon wrote on