So Much for Jack Smith’s Classified Documents Trial!

Keeping up with Donald Trump’s court schedule is a dizzying task, since he faces two federal trials, a criminal trial in Georgia, and two separate civil and criminal trials in New York. (Oh, and he’s running for president.) To make it easier to follow along, each Monday we’ll be looking back at all the Trump trial–related developments you might have missed the previous week.

Last week, Donald Trump’s legal defense earned a major victory when a judge officially removed special counsel Jack Smith’s trial date for the classified documents case. Meanwhile, Trump’s defense in his hush money trial took a beating when Stormy Daniels testified. And in more grim news for Trump, the GOP speaker of the House said he would not defund the special counsel’s office.

Judge Aileen Cannon finally did what many were expecting: She pulled the plug on Smith’s classified documents case by announcing she would be vacating the May 20 trial date.

Cannon cited the “myriad” pretrial motions that have yet to be resolved and reasoned that setting a trial date at this point “would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court.” Cannon said that, in total, there are eight “substantive pretrial motions” still pending, including one by Trump’s defense team to compel the special counsel to disclose hundreds of additional pages of classified and unclassified material.

Smith recently acknowledged that some classified evidence had been shuffled out of order in the aftermath of the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago, prompting Trump’s attorneys to demand that the entire case be tossed out.

Smith has not publicly commented on Cannon’s decision, and it’s not clear what options he has to potentially appeal it. But it’s looking pretty certain that Trump won’t face a jury trial before the November election over charges of mishandling classified documents in the waning days of his first presidency.

Last week, the woman at the heart of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money case took the witness stand and delivered withering testimony against Trump while withstanding a bruising cross-examination by the defense.

Daniels kicked off her testimony by going into detail about her one-night stand with Trump 18 years ago in a hotel suite in Lake Tahoe. After she shared what was in the former president’s toiletry bag, the type of boxers he wore, and that he did not wear a condom, it got to be a bit much for New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan. He directed prosecutors to limit Daniels’ answers, but as Slate’s Jeremy Stahl reported in his courtroom dispatch, “Daniels, for her part, came off as relatably as possible for an adult film performer describing a sexual encounter with a former president.”

Two days later, Trump attorney Susan Necheles tried pulling out all the stops to denigrate Daniels in the eyes of the jury during cross-examination. “Necheles all but called Daniels a whore, pointing to tweets describing her as an ‘aging harlot,’ another calling her a ‘disgusting degenerate prostitute,’ and one calling her a ‘human toilet,’ ” wrote Stahl, in an analysis of Daniels’ second day of testimony. The day could double as a class in how the law mistreats women, Slate’s Susan Matthews observed.

Now that Daniels’ testimony has concluded, Trump’s former attorney and personal fixer Michael Cohen is up next. Here’s a refresher on the rise and fall of his relationship with Trump.

The battle to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from her election interference case turned a new corner last week: The Georgia Court of Appeals announced that it was granting an appeal to Trump’s attorneys, who are seeking to disqualify Willis from prosecuting the former president.

The DA, who brought a 35-count indictment against Trump and 18 others for conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, has been through the wringer this year. In January, allegations surfaced that Willis was dating special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to work on her investigation into Trump. That led to a dramatic, two-week-long evidentiary hearing in February, during which Willis herself ended up testifying in her defense, along with her father and Wade. Ultimately, Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis could stay on her criminal election interference case, provided that Wade resign. (He did.)

Trump’s attorneys appealed McAfee’s decision, and now that an appeals court has given the greenlight, the misconduct allegations against Willis will essentially be litigated all over again. The court is expected to hold oral arguments and rule on the appeal within about six months—right in time for November’s election.

Until then, McAfee will likely hold off on assigning Willis’ case a trial date, which means that Trump has successfully knocked off one more criminal trial for himself.

The GOP House speaker told Politico he’s resisting calls from the extreme MAGA wing of his party to defund Smith as part of Congress’ appropriations process.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene recently led a failed attempt to oust Johnson from the speakership and has been calling to have Smith’s office defunded because he’s leading two criminal investigations into Trump. However, Johnson seemed to rule that out, telling Politico, “There is a necessity for a function like that, because sometimes the Department of Justice—which is an executive branch agency—can’t necessarily, without a conflict of interest, investigate or prosecute the president who’s their boss, or the president’s family.”

But Politico also reported that Johnson seems to be looking at other avenues to undermine Smith. During a press conference last week, he insisted that Trump hadn’t done anything wrong, saying, “You’re going to see Congress address this in every possible way.” Johnson also told Politico that he’s been working with House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan to investigate what else can be done about Smith, asserting that “there has to be some accountability” and noting, “Congress has the power of the purse, of course.”