CNN reports:

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers see a major opportunity this week to use his criminal document mishandling case in Florida to create an impasse on his calendar for the two federal judges overseeing his major criminal cases.

Juggling his campaign and court calendar and playing his cases off one another is a key part of Trump’s legal strategy. The ultimate goal, his team has said openly, is to prevent Trump from being tried in federal court before voters cast their ballots in the 2024 general election.

A primary aim for Trump’s legal team, according to people familiar with the strategy, is to put the judge in DC overseeing the 2020 federal election obstruction case, Tanya Chutkan, in a position where she can’t start a trial before Election Day.

“Meaning, ice her,” said a person familiar with Trump’s trial schedule strategy. “Making it impossible for her to jam a trial down before the election, by things that are out of her control.”

Chutkan set an initial trial date for March 4, which has been delayed indefinitely because of appeals. Yet if the Supreme Court returns the case to Chutkan, that trial could be back on the calendar within a month or two.

One way to hamper Chutkan is to convince the judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, to move Trump’s Mar-a-Lago document mishandling trial from late May until the summer.

Then, as summer approaches, the Mar-a-Lago case may require Cannon to push the trial back again and again because of the legal complexities around classified documents that still have to be worked out, according to people familiar with the case. [Continue reading…]