Federal Judge Aileen Cannon has set Trump trial for May 2024, at the same time as the Republican primaries, on Friday July 21. The former U.S. president will face 37 charges.

A US judge on Friday ordered Donald Trump’s trial for mishandling top secret documents to begin in May of next year, at the height of what is expected to be a bitter and divisive presidential election campaign.

US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon set the start of the jury trial of the former president — the first ever to face criminal charges — for May 20, 2024.

Prosecutors had asked for the trial to begin in December of this year, while Trump’s defense attorneys had requested it be held after the November 2024 election.

Cannon said she chose a May start date to give both sides time to process more than 1.1 million pages of discovery evidence and confront the challenge of handling the classified documents at the heart of the case.

The trial will be held at a federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, a city about 130 miles (210 kilometers) north of Miami in a part of Florida handily won by Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests.

The 77-year-old Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination and the trial will begin near the end of the primary campaign to select the party’s candidate.

The Republican National Convention, where the nominee will be selected, is to take place July 15-18 in Milwaukee but most of the major primary contests will have already taken place by May 20.

The trial will not stop the onetime reality television star from campaigning, but a criminal defendant is generally required to be present during the proceedings, which are expected to last weeks, if not months.

If the trial is ongoing and Trump wins the November 2024 election, he could conceivably take action to intervene or even pardon himself upon taking office.

Trump pleaded not guilty last month to some three dozen criminal counts for allegedly refusing to return sensitive government records he took when he left the White House in 2021.

Trump faces 31 counts of “willful retention of national defense information” relating to specific documents. A conviction on each count carries up to 10 years in prison.

Other charges include: conspiracy to obstruct justice, punishable by up to 20 years in prison; withholding a document or record, which also carries a potential 20-year sentence; and making false statements.

Malo Pinatel, with AFP