Trump in court in Florida in classified documents case

Donald Trump is in court in Florida as a judge prepares to consider whether to delay his trial for alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Originally scheduled to start in May, the trial has been held up by a legal battle over what evidence Mr Trump's legal team will be able to review.

Prosecutors are pushing for a 8 July start, while Mr Trump instead wants a date after the election, or in August.

Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to 40 felony charges in the federal case.

He is accused of retaining sensitive national security files at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving office in January 2021 and then obstructing repeated government efforts to get them back.

Indicted alongside him on related charges are his personal aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira.

Mr Trump, who is expected to unofficially clinch the Republican nomination for president later this month, has painted the four criminal cases he faces this year as a politically motivated "witch hunt" brought by Democrats to hurt his re-election prospects.

He has fought, with some success, to delay each case against him - although his first trial, over allegations related to money he paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels, is due to kick off later this month.

On Thursday, his lawyers in this Florida case said in a court filing: "As the leading candidate in the 2024 election, President Trump strongly asserts that a fair trial cannot be conducted this year in a manner consistent with the Constitution."

A trial that takes place before the election would interfere with Mr Trump's "Sixth Amendment right to be present and to participate in these proceedings" as well as the "First Amendment right that he shares with the American people to engage in campaign speech", they claimed.

Some legal experts have accused Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, of slow-walking the pre-trial process, including by postponing key deadlines.

In November, she hinted at a delay in the original schedule, citing a Trump team complaint about the time it would need to review what she called the "unusually high volume of unclassified and classified discovery" in the case.

That material includes 1.3 million pages of unclassified documents, 5,500 pages of classified documents and 60 terabytes of closed-circuit television footage, she said.

But Judge Cannon sided with prosecutors in two key rulings earlier this week regarding what evidence may be presented.

On Wednesday, she rejected Mr Trump's request to see more of the classified government filings than it already has access to. And the previous day she ruled that Mr Nauta and Mr de Oliveira did not require access to any of the classified discovery submitted by Special Counsel Jack Smith's team of prosecutors.

The judge's decision to reschedule the trial date will be key in shaping the timeline of Mr Trump's other court dates.

His trial in New York related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels begins on 25 March and is expected to last six weeks. His federal case in Washington on election interference charges, also brought by the special counsel's office, is on hold as the US Supreme Court rules on Mr Trump's claim that he should be immune from prosecution. A trial in Georgia on similar charges awaits a court date.