Judge Aileen Cannon, pictured left (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida), (right) special counsel Jack Smith (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Despite the opposition of special counsel Jack Smith, the judge in the Mar-a-Lago case for the third time handed Donald Trump and his co-defendants an extension when it comes to revealing their expert witnesses, this after the former president’s defense team called the New York hush-money trial that ended with 34 felony convictions “challenging” for meeting the previously scheduled Monday deadline.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday said she found “good cause exists for the extension request and that no prejudice to the Special Counsel or to the proceeding will result from granting the relief sought in the Motion,” setting the new expert witness notice deadline for July 8.
“Moving forward, any requests for extension or enlargement must be filed sufficiently in advance of the deadline at issue,” Cannon wrote, acknowledging without getting into specifics that the extension request from Trump, valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira came on the day their notice was due.
In their motion for an extension on behalf of all of the defendants, Trump lawyers told the judge that they “have been diligently working to identify and engage potential expert witnesses, but the process is not complete” — and they cited their representation of Trump in the Manhattan trial as one reason for not being able to meet the deadline.
“As the Court is aware, President Trump and his counsel recently concluded a six-week trial in New York, which has made the timing of the expert-notice deadline challenging,” the defense said. “Since the New York trial, we have also been reviewing recent productions of classified and unclassified discovery by the Special Counsel’s Office, preparing to file a pretrial motion based on certain of those disclosures, and preparing to timely file our CIPA § 5 Notice pursuant to the deadline set by the Court.”
The defense further said that they thought they had an expert witness lined up, but over the weekend that individual said they “could not work on this case.”
“We are in discussions with other potential experts, but given the need to confirm that witnesses are conflict-free and able to complete the engagement process, we have been unable to finalize our expert engagements by today’s deadline,” Trump lawyers added.
More Law&Crime coverage: Judge Cannon strikes allegation that Trump showed off classified map and expresses ‘concerns’ about Jack Smith approach, as defense immediately files another motion to dismiss
In compliance with Cannon’s rules, the Trump team certified at the end of their motion that they conferred with the Special Counsel’s Office on the extension, confirmed in “objective terms” when that conferral took place, and included a paragraph with Smith’s position opposing the extension request:
The Government opposes a third extension of the defendants’ expert notice deadline. Since the Court set a defense expert notice deadline of November 15, 2023 (ECF No. 83), the defense has already sought and received two adjournments of pretrial deadlines—one that vacated the defense expert notice deadline altogether until an undefined later date (see ECF No. 215), and another that resulted in a month-long extension of the deadline (from May 9, 2024 to June 10, 2024, see ECF Nos. 439, 530). Both of these were over Government objection (see, e.g., ECF No. 453). This morning, June 10, the day the notice is due, Trump’s counsel notified the Government for the first time of his intention to seek another extension of the deadline because according to counsel, over the weekend of June 8-9, Trump’s expert declined to participate in this trial. The Government assumes that this is the only expert Trump intends to notice, because otherwise there is no reason he could not designate the other experts now. Regardless, the defense has had notice of the Government’s experts for nearly five months—since January 12, 2024—and there is no reason the Court should grant yet another extension.
Judge Cannon, you may recall, scolded Smith in late May for not meaningfully conferring with the defense before prosecutors, in a Friday of Memorial Day weekend email thread, said they would request a gag order on Trump for putting law enforcement in “foreseeable danger” with falsehoods about the Mar-a-Lago search, saying on Truth Social the feds were authorized to assassinate him.
The judge tossed the request for lacking “professional courtesy” and warned of possible sanctions if the parties did not file her conferral-related instructions. In a subsequent filing, Smith did as ordered when again requesting that the judge modify the former president’s bond conditions.
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