A judge shut a courtroom from the public and reporters Thursday during pretrial motions in the death penalty case of a South Carolina man charged with killing two police officers in a 2018 ambush. Court hearings in South Carolina are almost always open. Prosecutor Ed Clements did not fight the motion and Circuit Judge Eugene Griffith Jr. granted it, ordering the public and members of the media to leave the courtroom.
today, mister president? i m very proud of my son. hunter biden will still have to appear in court, where a judge will sign off on the agreement. with that, let s get smarter with the head of our panel tonight, sam stein, joins us katie benner, pulitzer prize-winning justice department and former federal prosecutor, renato mariotti, who s also a legal affairs columnist for politico. renato, is this surprising that judge cannon set the date for trump, just eight weeks from now? it s not surprising, stephanie, because there s something called the speedy trial act. the constitution, defendants have a right to a speedy trial. there s a law that is enacted that gives meaning to that. essentially says that defendants are entitled to go to trial within 70 days. now is a practical matter that almost never happens. among other things you mentioned it earlier, stephanie, pretrial motions, for example, when they are filed, they stopped the clock.
renato mariotti, who s also a legal affairs columnist for politico. renato, is this surprising that judge cannon set the date for trump, just eight weeks from now? it s not surprising, stephanie, because there s something called the speedy trial act. the constitution, defendants have a right to a speedy trial. there s a law that is enacted that gives meaning to that. essentially says that defendants are entitled to go to trial within 70 days. now is a practical matter that almost never happens. among other things you mentioned it earlier, stephanie, pretrial motions, for example, when they are filed, they stopped the clock. when the judge is considering them, that stops the clock. there s a variety of other reasons why these cases ultimately generally take much longer than that. so it s a practical matter. she s doing what she s supposed to do by setting an early trial date. but we should expect this trial to be quite some time in the future, at the very earliest, you know, maybe a y
The former president's arguments against the federal indictment are not likely to succeed. But with Judge Aileen Cannon's help, they could cause pivotal delays.
that means nothing for the espionage act charges. they re gonna say trump didn t have the intent, he didn t realize what was going on, didn t know what was in the boxes. that s where this various testimony of all these other people s gonna come in, including how a document got in his desk that had the classification markings. they re gonna argue, they re gonna try to make as a scapegoat, they re going to say he went rogue. he misunderstood the importance of donald trump, he just went and started moving stuff around. it s not gonna play. they re gonna have all kinds of pretrial motions, they re gonna try and claim political, sorry, prosecutorial misconduct. there might be a good, decent earring over the needs to be done, i m fine with that. at the end, i don t see their substantive defense as a legal matter here. they re gambling on a hung jury, because it is south florida, which is always possible. juries are unpredictable. and they re gambling on the idea that this doesn t go to tri