The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case has set a potential trial date for mid-August in Fort Pierce, a time frame viewed by legal experts as too soon and unlikely to stand.

The order from U.S. District Aileen Cannon — who is based in Fort Pierce in St. Lucie County, which is at the northern end of the federal court system’s Southern District of Florida —  was posted in the case docket early Tuesday. The judge wrote that the case is now set “for a Criminal Jury Trial during the two-week period commencing August 14, 2023, or as soon thereafter as the case may be called.”

A scheduling conference is set for Aug. 8, and all hearings will be held at the Alto Lee Adams, Sr. United States Courthouse in Fort Pierce, according to the order. The order also requested that all pretrial motions be filed by the end of next month, on July 24.

Among other things, the judge also asked both sides to submit witness lists as well as proposed jury instructions, “including substantive charges and defenses, and a proposed verdict form.”

Trump pleaded not guilty in Miami last week to all 37 counts in an indictment handed up by a grand jury over his handling of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

The former President’s co-defendant, valet Waltine Nauta, is scheduled to be arraigned before a Miami federal magistrate on June 27. Although Nauta appeared in court with Trump, he did not enter a plea because he lacked a Florida lawyer to represent him. (Anyone practicing law in Florida must be licensed by the Florida Bar.)

Later date more likely

Legal observers said Tuesday the schedule set by the judge is overly optimistic given the extent of pre-trial work to be done by the prosecution and defense. It comes after Jack Smith, the special counsel for the U.S. Government who is overseeing the investigation of Trump, requested a speedy trial.

But it also comes at a time when the defense attorney rosters do not appear to be complete.

Trump’s lawyers include Tallahassee-based attorney Christopher Kise and Todd Blanche of New York. They are not believed to have hired anyone who is experienced in dealing with the federal Classified Information Procedures Act, a 1980 law that sets forth the rules for the handling of secret government documents at trial.

Moreover, Stanley Woodward Jr., a Washington-based attorney who represents Nauta, does not appear to have hired a Florida lawyer.

“One should not take Cannon’s order at face value,” said Robert Jarvis, a professor of law at Nova Southeastern University. “She’s a very young judge. She has handled very few criminal cases. We’re not going to see a trial in August 2023. This is part of the pressure federal judges are under to move their dockets. There is going to be a very long period of discovery and I do not see a trial until 2025.”

It would also take the proceedings past the 2024 presidential election, which Trump hopes will result in his return to the White House for a second term.

Cannon, 42, is a Trump nominee who came under heavy legal community criticism last year for appointing a special master to intervene in a lawsuit Trump filed against the government in his legal battle over the documents at Mar-a-Lago. Her ruling delayed a review of the documents by the FBI. But she was reversed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which sharply criticized her naming of a special master as an improper “special exception” for the former President.

Still, Jon May, a Boca Raton criminal defense lawyer who served as co-counsel in the drug smuggling case against the late deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, said Cannon’s quick setting of a trial date “is not unusual.”

Cannon’s order, he said, “forces the lawyers to get moving on the case, knowing the case is going to be postponed for whatever reasonable time is necessary for the government to provide discovery to the defense and for the defense to file motions that are necessary based on legal issues.”

May also said the Trump case would likely become “a minimum three-month process for getting the security clearances that defense counsel will need in order to review the classified information.”

It took more than 18 months for Noriega to stand trial in a Miami federal court after his capture by U.S. forces in Panama in late 1989. In early 1990, government and defense lawyers clashed behind closed doors before U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler over the use of secret documents as the defense sought evidence to show their client worked with U.S. intelligence agencies in international drug deals. After a trial that started in the fall of 1991, and which was interrupted at its midpoint when the judge underwent coronary bypass surgery, a jury convicted Noriega in April 1992.

Rapid-fire orders

In the face of a road to trial complicated by the use of classified documents, Cannon last Thursday quickly gave “all attorneys of record and forthcoming attorneys of record” a deadline of last Friday for contacting a litigation security group at the Justice Department to expedite a security-clearance process. She ordered the lawyers to formally confirm by Tuesday that they complied with her directives.

According to the case docket, Kise, the Florida-based lawyer representing Trump, filed a notice last Friday certifying to the court that he had contacted the Justice Department security group on behalf  “of team members anticipated to participate in this matter.”

And on Monday, U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, who is assigned to the case along with Cannon, ruled Trump may not make any public disclosures of evidence against him.

Trump may view documents under his lawyers’ supervision, according to the order. But he may not retain them or share them with any members of the public.

“Discovery materials, along with any information derived therefrom, shall not be disclosed to the public or the news media, or disseminated on any news or social media platform, without prior notice to and consent of the United States or approval of the court,” according to the magistrate’s order.

The reference to social media platforms would likely prevent Trump from using court-generated information to deride Smith, the special counsel, and his fellow prosecutors on the former president’s website, Truth Social. Since the indictment was handed up against him, the former president has used the platform to rail against the government’s case as a politically motivated move by the Biden administration to sidetrack his 2024 run for a second term as president.