Attorneys for Donald Trump invoked the notorious Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in an effort to delay their client's federal trial on charges stemming from Trump's alleged mishandling of classified materials after his presidency.
In a Monday legal filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, lawyers for Trump and his aide Walt Nauta asked Judge Aileen Cannon to deny Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith's efforts to have the case heard until "after substantive motions have been presented and adjudicated."
The tactic is presumably intended to delay the trial's start date. And they're using Noriega, who died in 2017, to do it.
Buried in the legal filing is a reference to an order tied to an infamous 1990s drug trafficking case, USA v. Noriega, in which the federal government sought to try the former Panamanian leader for a sweeping international conspiracy involving foreign heads of state and sensitive intelligence.
That is, the same type of intelligence that is being considered in Trump's case, lawyers for Trump and Nauta argue.
They wrote, "Indeed, other courts, including a court in this District, have recognized that it is reasonable to delay trial where 'discovery would be both complicated and extensive, covering thousands of documents, many of which are sensitive or classified and therefore subject to elaborate security measures as well as the time-consuming procedures set forth in the Classified Information Procedures Act.'"
Newsweek has reached out to the Trump and Nauta defense teams via email for comment.
The defense teams' arguments are multifaceted. In their view, the meaningful review of the "purportedly classified records" Trump is charged with possessing illegally cannot begin until the teams first receive security clearances. This reflects their belief that there should be no "secret evidence" in a case involving the prosecution of a "leading Presidential candidate by his political opponent."
"Our democracy demands no less than full transparency," the lawyers argued. "But it is nonetheless premature to even engage in the evaluation of such issues and the Court should therefore postpone its consideration until the Defendants are able to participate in an informed debate."
While it's a loose fit, there are some parallels between the Trump and Noriega cases.
In Noriega's prosecution, several other, lesser-known co-conspirators in the case were charged along with him, leading the defense counsel to request separate trials for those less-prominent defendants. In the Trump case, attorneys for Nauta have hinted at a potential push for a separate trial.
Noriega's case also had deep political overtones involving the unusual step of the United States seeking the extradition of a foreign leader, which fed into his anti-American political rhetoric. Trump has said the Biden administration's Justice Department is poisoned against him, accusing Attorney General Merrick Garland of using the legal system to crush President Joe Biden's political opponents.
And like Trump's case, Noriega's involved the admission of scores of classified materials into evidence, which were deemed too sensitive for public view. Noriega's defense at the time leaned heavily on that fact. In addition, there was an effort to secure a continuance in the trial for one of his co-defendants, who had sought to be tried separately from Noriega with different evidence.
"This case involved several novel issues due to the presence of Noriega, the former leader of Panama," the court ruled at the time. It said that "discovery would be both complicated and extensive, covering thousands of documents, many of which are sensitive or classified and therefore subject to elaborate security measures"—the same wording cited by the Trump and Nauta lawyers.
The motion for separate trials in the Noriega case was ultimately denied. However, while the question of Trump's Noriega defense remains unsettled, his legal team will be allowed several extra days to prepare. On Tuesday, Cannon agreed to delay a hearing involving how to handle those materials in the trial because of a scheduling conflict.
The hearing, originally scheduled for this Friday, will now take place July 18.
