Earlier this month, a federal judge on the Donald Trump case relating to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, denounced the former president’s attempt to transform the classified documents found in his Florida estate to personal property.

The investigation began in 2022, shortly after the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) found missing documents from Trump’s presidency at his residency, Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Once Trump’s attorneys delivered 15 boxes of classified records, the FBI’s probe started. The former president is charged with deliberate retention of national defense information, conspiracy to block justice, withholding a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation, and corruptly concealing a document. 

In the classified records case, Trump has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Over a year later, Trump’s response to the allegations remains strong. Trump’s bid to identify the documents found at Mar-a-Lago as personal property, used the Presidential Records Act to argue that the records found were private. However, Judge Cannon rejected this effort, writing that the charges “make no reference to the Presidential Records Act.” The PRA actually affirms that records “are the property of the United States government and will be managed by NARA at the end of the administration,” unless they are highly personal items.

Yet there still remains no concrete date for the trial to begin. The trial has recently been pushed to May 20th and is expected to be rescheduled again.