By Jacqueline Thomsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump’s trial over his alleged mishandling of classified documents will begin on May 20 next year, according to a U.S. court order on Friday.
Trump’s lawyers had resisted setting a date but said any trial should take place after the November 2024 U.S. presidential election, in which he is front-runner for the Republican nomination.
A Trump spokesperson said the trial schedule “allows President Trump and his legal team to continue fighting” the criminal case. A spokesperson for U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office declined to comment.
Friday’s ruling came from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who sits in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Trump was indicted on June 8 on charges that he unlawfully kept national security documents when he left office and lied to officials who sought to recover them. He has pleaded not guilty.
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Federal prosecutors had asked Cannon to schedule the trial for December.
The case is one of several legal woes Trump faces as he campaigns for 2024.
Trump is set to go to trial in Manhattan on March 25 on separate charges that he falsified business records to conceal a hush money payment to a [censored] star.
He said on Tuesday he had received a letter saying he is a target of a grand jury investigation into efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat.
(Reporting by Katharine Jackson and Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by John Stonestreet and David Holmes)