Former US president Donald Trump is to go on trial next May on charges relating to his handling of classified documents, a judge in Florida has ruled.
Prosecutors had sought “a speedy trial” but Mr Trump had sought to put off any proceedings until after the US presidential election in November next year.
In her order on Friday, judge Aileen Cannon said the trial should be held in the city of Fort Pierce, which is about 2½ hours north of Miami.
This means that the jury pool will be drawn largely from areas where Mr Trump was successful in his previous presidential campaigns.
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Mr Trump is the frontrunner to secure the nomination of the Republican party to run for the White House in 2024.
However, as he campaigns for the presidency, he is also facing at least two criminal trials with the possibility that he could shortly be formally charged for a third time.
Judge Cannon on Friday set a date of May 20th next year for the commencement of the trial in relation to Mr Trump’s handling of classified documents.
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Last month Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal counts related to his retention of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021 and subsequent alleged efforts to conceal them from the US government.
The prosecution had sought that the trial should get under way in December this year.
However, in her order on Friday the judge said the proposed time schedule put forward by the prosecution was “atypically accelerated and inconsistent with ensuring a fair trial”.
She agreed with defence lawyers that the amount of evidence that would need to be processed before the trial, including classified information, was “voluminous”.
“The court finds that the interests of justice served by this continuance outweigh the best interest of the public and defendants in a speedy trial,” the judge said.
The May trial date is essentially in the middle ground between the time frames proposed by the prosecution and the defence.
If the date set by judge Cannon for the classified documents trial holds, it would follow shortly after the scheduled prosecution of Mr Trump by state authorities in New York. In that case the former president has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.
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The legal cases are scheduled to take place while Republican voters in different parts of the country will be deciding on the party’s nominee for the presidency.
Mr Trump could also yet face further criminal prosecutions in the months ahead.
The former president revealed earlier this week that he had received a letter informing him that he was a target of a separate department of justice investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Separately, prosecutors in Georgia are expected to announce in the next couple of weeks whether he will face charges there on foot on an investigation into alleged attempts by Mr Trump and his allies to undermine the presidential election in the state.
