A Trump-Appointed Judge Who Showed Him Favor Gets the Documents Case

Those decisions, however, were only about what could be shown to a grand jury. Mr. Trump’s defense team can bring new motions to suppress that evidence and keep the information from reaching the trial jury, and Judge Cannon will not be bound by Judge Howell’s rulings.

Decisions Judge Cannon makes in establishing the pretrial and trial calendar could also be critical. Mr. Trump has long pursued a strategy of trying to run out the clock on legal matters, and if he can push the documents trial beyond the 2024 election, there is a chance that a Republican — whether that is Mr. Trump himself, or another nominee — will become president and end the case.

Because the case involves classified evidence — 31 of the counts against Mr. Trump center on violations of the Espionage Act in the unauthorized retention of 31 secret and top secret documents — it is likely that any judge would spend significant time in handling pretrial hearings over whether to allow substitutions that do not contain classified information.

Samuel Buell, a white-collar criminal law professor at Duke University and former lead prosecutor on the Enron task force, said that there could be “a lot of misdirections and delays and things that may play well in the MAGA media space but I don’t see legally how even a judge inclined to make mischief is going to prevent this from going to trial.”

Still, “out-of-left-field rulings could be coming here,” he said, adding, “When you have classified documents, there is abundant opportunities to slow this down, and if they’ve got a judge who is willing to go along with slowing this down, it becomes very hard to predict when this will go to trial.”

To be sure, there is no guarantee that Judge Cannon will resume the pattern she exhibited last fall. It remains to be seen whether she will respond to the reputational harm it brought her by using a second turn in the spotlight to rule in a more straightforward fashion.

Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor, said the 31 documents at the heart of the Espionage Act charges were likely carefully selected by Mr. Smith, and after negotiations with national security officials over whether they could be shown to the defense team and potentially jurors if necessary.