There is no trial date in sight for the Trump documents case, as a judge he appointed holds hearing after hearing

There is no trial date in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, and none in sight.

Instead of steering the case as quickly as possible to a jury, the judge, Aileen Cannon, has burned day after day of court time listening to lawyers haggle over defense motions that make what experts say are long-shot arguments to dismiss charges, exclude evidence or otherwise attack the prosecution.

On Friday, the latest chapter in this legal saga will unfold in Cannon’s courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida, when she is set to preside over a daylong hearing on the question of whether special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment was proper under the Constitution — an argument similar to one that was rejected by other judges when applied to special counsels Robert Mueller, who ran the investigation of Trump’s relationship with Russia, and David Weiss, who is prosecuting Hunter Biden.

On Monday, Cannon is slated to hear a defense challenge of how Smith’s office has been funded, another line of argument that has been uniformly rejected by other courts. And on Tuesday, she will consider the question of whether a D.C. judge erred by allowing testimony from Trump’s lawyer under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege.

Those are the sorts of motions, some criminal law experts say, that few judges would have entertained during lengthy hearings. Instead, they say, she could have read the legal briefs and issued a ruling.

By continuing to require hours of court time for nearly every matter of dispute, Cannon, a Trump appointee, has played right into Trump’s strategy of trying to delay a trial in this case until after the election. While she says she is merely trying to ensure fairness, her actions have raised