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Former first lady Melania Trump made a rare public appearance late last week, traveling to the National Archives to speak at a naturalization ceremony, even as her husband, former President Donald Trump, faces charges regarding classified documents.
The Slovenia-born former model is only the second foreign-born first lady, following Louisa, the London-born wife of former President John Quincy Adams. She is also the only first lady to become a naturalized U.S. citizen after emigrating to New York City on a worker visa in 1996, the New York Post reports.
“How fortunate to be with the naturalizing individuals and their families as they recite the Oath of Allegiance and become Americans before our great nation’s founding documents,” she told the crowd at the Archives.
In July, the federal judge overseeing his case ruled that Trump will stand trial on May 20, 2024, on charges that he mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon appeared to split the difference between prosecutors’ request for a December 2023 trial date and Trump’s request to postpone the trial until after the November 2024 election,” Politico reported.
Fort Pierce will host the first pretrial hearing in the case involving Trump’s classified documents. After the nearly two-hour hearing in federal court in Fort Pierce, Florida, where attorneys for Trump pushed for an indefinite delay of a trial date, Judge Cannon said she would issue a written order “promptly.”
Trump’s attorneys argued they needed more time to prepare for what they characterize as a challenging case involving a substantial body of evidence. They contend that the former president won’t be given a fair trial before the 2024 election, where he is overwhelmingly the GOP frontrunner.
Prosecutors had proposed that the trial begin in December, saying the case is not complex and there’s no need for a lengthy delay. Prosecutor David Harbach told the judge that Trump’s legal team has repeatedly suggested he should be treated differently because he’s running for president,” Market Watch reported.
“The Department of Justice urged Cannon not to sign off on the Trump team’s desired delay. It was the first time arguments were held in front of Cannon in the unprecedented federal prosecution of the former president, who is also facing charges in a separate case in New York. Cannon has been under increased scrutiny since a court ruling last year that critics said was unduly favorable to Trump,” the outlet added.
Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers, told the judge that he disagreed with the prosecution’s claim that this case should be treated like any other given Trump is the leading candidate looking to run against President Joe Biden.
While Trump has been charged, Biden, who also was found to have had boxes of classified documents in his possession and had never before served as president, has not been charged by the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, in late October, the National Archives located tens of thousands of emails that Biden used while using a pseudonym in a major budding scandal that could dwarf the one involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Under legal pressure, the National Archives has located 82,000 pages of emails that President Joe Biden sent or received during his vice presidential tenure on three private pseudonym accounts, a total that potentially dwarfs the amount that landed Hillary Clinton in hot water a decade ago, according to a federal court filing released Monday,” Just the News reported.
The nonprofit public interest law firm Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a status report in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the National Archives and Records Administration on Monday that included the total number of Biden’s private email exchanges, according to the outlet.
The organization brought the lawsuit so it could gain access to the emails after Just the News revealed about a year ago that Joe Biden used three pseudonym email accounts — [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] — while serving as President Barack Obama’s VP.
