Judge Aileen Cannon has postponed the case involving former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago documents without setting a trial date, pushing some court dates into late July.
The order issued on Tuesday, less than two weeks before Trump's trial was set to start on May 20, leaves uncertainty about when Trump's case will go to trial.
Cannon attributed the delay to the need to address various issues related to handling classified information during the trial, which are governed by the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA).
Cannon wrote that setting a trial date at this point, before resolving the many pre-trial and CIPA issues, would be unwise and inconsistent with the court's duty to fully consider the pending pre-trial motions.
By not setting a trial date, Cannon's decision aligns with one of the initial requests from Trump's legal team.
The last-minute postponement of the trial date comes as Cannon has yet to address several motions, including several by Trump's team to dismiss the case.
In outlining the new schedule, Cannon mentioned that she still needs to rule on eight substantial pretrial motions.
The new set of trial deadlines delays most of the CIPA-related litigation until July, which will determine how classified information is presented at trial.
Cannon Earlier on Tuesday, another CIPA-related deadline in the case was suspended after Trump's legal team raised concerns about prosecutors' handling of the documents.
Special counsel Jack Smith's team admitted in court filings last week that some boxes of documents may not have been preserved in the same order they were found but downplayed the significance of this in preparing for trial.
Prosecutors stated in a filing on Friday that the filter team took care to ensure that no documents were moved between boxes, but did not prioritize maintaining the sequence of documents within each box.
They also pointed out that Trump's co-defendant and valet Walt Nauta did not raise his current issue regarding intra-box sequencing with the government until over nine months after the boxes were made available to him.
Updated at 5:40 p.m.
