A month after former President Donald Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents, the judge presiding over the case is set to take on a more visible role as she weighs competing requests on a trial date and hears arguments this week on a procedural, but potentially crucial, area of the law. A pretrial conference Tuesday to discuss procedures for handling classified information will represent the first courtroom arguments in the case before US District Judge Aileen Cannon since Trump was indicted five weeks ago.
The arguments could provide insight into how Cannon intends to preside over the case while she also confronts the unresolved question of how to schedule Trump’s trial as he campaigns for president. Those issues would be closely watched in any trial involving a former president. But Cannon could face additional scrutiny in light of a much-dissected ruling she issued last year that granted the Trump team’s request for a special master to conduct an independent review of the reams of classified records removed by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate.