An attorney with the special counsel Jack Smith's team told a judge Friday that holding former President Donald Trump's classified documents trial before the November election would not violate Justice Department policy.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is hearing arguments today on moving the May 20 trial date in Trump's federal classified documents case during a court conference in Florida that the former president is attending in person.

Special counsel Prosecutor Jay Bratt pushed for a July start, saying that holding a trial within 60 days of an election would not violate the Justice Department's typical aversion to bringing politically charged cases so close to an election.

Bratt told Judge Cannon a trial is permissible because the policy does not apply to already indicted matters.

"We are in full compliance with the Justice Department manual," said Bratt.

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he few Republicans who have not succumbed to the cult of Donald Trump cling to one last hope. They are crossing their fingers that on Tuesday night the ex-president’s march to his party’s nomination will be halted, or at least delayed, by a defeat in the New Hampshire primary at the hands of the former governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley. But it is a thin hope.

Even if Haley wins a famous victory in this snowbound state, the battles ahead are on terrain far more tricky for her and congenial to him. On Monday, Trump won his party’s contest in Iowa by a record-breaking margin, amassing more votes than all his rivals combined – and the primary electorates that come next look more like Iowa’s than New Hampshire’s, which, unusually, includes a big slice of Trump-sceptic independents.

 

Infowars host Owen Shroyer was sentenced on Tuesday to two months behind bars for joining the mob’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, which prosecutors said he “helped create” by spewing violent rhetoric and spreading baseless claims of election fraud to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Shroyer hosts a daily show called “The War Room With Owen Shroyer” for the website operated by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Prosecutors said Shroyer used his online platform — and later a megaphone outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — to amplify lies that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, who was the Republican incumbent.

Shroyer didn’t enter the Capitol, but he led a march to the building and led rioters in chants near the top of the building’s steps. He’s among only a few people charged in the riot who neither went inside the building nor were accused of engaging in violence or destruction.

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