(The Center Square) – Federal prosecutors said former President Donald Trump’s open-ended request to defer a trial date until after the 2024 election is unjustified in a case that alleges he illegally kept classified documents.

Trump wants to postpone any trial on allegations he illegally kept and concealed classified documents at Mar-a-Lago until after the 2024 presidential election. Attorneys for Trump and alleged co-conspirator Walt Nauta previously filed a motion that detailed the reasons they want to push back the trial, which is set for December 2023. The motion cited a number of reasons for the delay, including the sheer amount of discover materials in the case, which so far include 833,450 pages of records and nine months of security camera footage. Defense attorneys also said that ultimately a trial won’t be needed anyway.

Prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith pushed back on those claims in a response to the motion from the former president.

“Defendants Trump and Nauta claim unequivocally that they cannot receive a fair trial prior to the conclusion of the next presidential election, urge the Court to withdraw the current scheduling Order, and request that the Court not even consider a new trial date until some unspecified later time. There is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the Defendants provide none,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors said the trial date should be Dec. 11, 2023.

“The Defendants...

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