MIAMI (AP) — A month after former President Donald Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents, the judge presiding over the case is set to take on a more visible role as she weighs competing requests on a trial date and hears arguments this week on a procedural, but potentially crucial, area of the law.

A pretrial conference Tuesday to discuss procedures for handling classified information will represent the first courtroom arguments in the case before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon since Trump was indicted five weeks ago. The arguments could provide insight into how Cannon intends to preside over the case while she also confronts the unresolved question of how to schedule Trump’s trial as he campaigns for president.

Those issues would be closely watched in any trial involving a former president. But Cannon could face additional scrutiny in light of a much-dissected ruling she issued last year that granted the Trump team’s request for a special master to conduct an independent review of the reams of classified records removed by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate. A three-judge federal appeals panel reversed her order, rebuking Cannon for a ruling it said she lacked the legal authority to make in the first place.

Cannon’s ruling, in a lawsuit Trump brought against the Justice Department, elicited criticism from legal experts who saw her as overly preferential to the former president. It also focused public attention on her limited experience as a judge, particularly in hugely sensitive national security matters, given that she was appointed to the bench just three years ago by Trump.

Still, some Florida lawyers say there’s no doubt, as the judge now assigned to Trump’s criminal case, that she’s mindful of the stakes of the most politically explosive federal prosecution in recent memory.

“She is not going to want to do anything but go by the book. The challenge is there has never been a book like this,” said Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. Attorney in Miami who served on the advisory committee that reviewed Cannon’s judicial application. He said he was impressed with her credentials and felt confident she would be able to oversee the case fairly.

“I think she is going to want to be very well-regarded for her judicial leadership of this case,” Coffey said.

Jeffrey Garland, a criminal defense lawyer in Fort Pierce, Florida — where Cannon’s courtroom is based — praised Cannon for her handling of a trial he had before her last year in which he represented a “quite difficult” defendant who’d been charged with throwing a chair at a federal prosecutor.

“She was able to maintain the dignity of the court and courtroom composure, and she was able to express control in ways that were not threatening,” Garland said, adding that he assumed Cannon would be able to do the same in the Trump case. “I think she understands that’s what a federal judge has to do in a case like this. It’s true in any case, but especially in this case.”

Cannon — a Duke University graduate and Colombian-born daughter of a Cuban immigrant — clerked for a U.S. Circuit Court judge and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida, prosecuting several dozen cases as part of her office’s Major Crimes Division and later handling appeals of convictions and sentences, before being nominated by Trump in 2020. She’s also been a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization.

Her ruling in the Trump lawsuit last September catapulted her into the spotlight since it effectively halted core aspects of the Justice Department’s investigation into the hoarding of classified documents. In overturning the order, the appeals court said that letting it stand would have allowed a “radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations.”

As the judge assigned to Trump’s criminal prosecution, she’ll be empowered to issue rulings that could shape the trajectory of the case, including about what evidence can and can’t be admitted and whether to proceed swiftly toward trial or grant the Trump team’s request for a delay.

There have been few matters of substance for Cannon to decide in the month since Trump’s indictment, though she did set a tentative August trial date — a formality under the Speedy Trial Act — in Fort Pierce and rebuffed a Justice Department request to file under seal a list of witness who prosecutors want Trump to be prohibited from discussing the case with.

But major issues lie ahead.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers are at odds over the trial date, a question with significant legal and political implications. The Justice Department has proposed a Dec. 11 trial, while defense lawyers have suggested that it should be put off until after the 2024 presidential election, citing the challenges of scheduling a date while Trump pursues the Republican nomination and legal issues that they say are “extraordinary” and complex.

It is not clear when that issue will be resolved.

Tuesday’s status conference centers on the Classified Information Procedures Act, a 1980 law that governs how classified information is handled in a criminal prosecution and that will likely provide an essential roadmap in this case. The law is meant to balance a defendant’s right to access evidence prosecutors intend to use at trial with the government’s desire to safeguard sensitive, classified information.

Richard Serafini, a Florida criminal defense lawyer and former senior Justice Department official, said he did not necessarily believe Cannon’s lack of experience in that area would be detrimental given the case law and past precedent she and the attorneys can turn to for consultation.

“These things aren’t novel. They’re not everyday occurrences, but it’s not like, ‘Oh, my goodness, there’s no precedent on any of these things,” he said.

Whatever happens, said Coffey, “the eyes of the world are on her. She is in the middle of writing a chapter in history.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — The hush money case against former President Donald Trump appears headed back to a New York court after a federal judge showed little inclination Tuesday to let Trump move the history-making prosecution to federal court.

Changing courts could give Trump a new avenue to try to get the case thrown out. Hoping to get to federal court, Trump’s lawyers argue that he was acting in his capacity as president when he hired and paid a personal attorney who orchestrated payouts to squelch allegations of extramarital sex — payouts that are at the heart of Manhattan prosecutors’ case against Trump.

After a three-hour hearing that featured surprise testimony from a Trump company insider, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein told a packed courtroom that he was not ready to make a “firm ruling” but saw “no relationship to any official act of the president” in the alleged conduct that made Trump the first former president ever charged with a crime.

“There’s no reason to believe that an equal measure of justice could not be rendered by the state court,” Hellerstein added. He said his remarks reflected his “present attitudes,” and a formal written ruling will follow within two weeks.

Lawyers for both sides declined to comment after the hearing.

Trump, a Republican, pleaded not guilty in April to state felony charges of falsifying business records to hide 2016 hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump has denied having had sexual encounters with either woman.

According to the indictment, Trump fudged records at his company to cover up the nature of payments made in 2017 to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to compensate him for arranging to buy the women’s silence and fronting the money for Daniels.

Trump’s lawyers have said those payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and not part of any cover-up.

Pressed by Hellerstein to prove it, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche called the legal chief of Trump’s company to the witness stand, though attorneys for both sides last week had agreed they would not call witnesses at the hearing.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, testified that he believed the payments were partly reimbursements for the money that Cohen had paid Daniels, and partly to compensate him for “the role that he was playing as counsel” for Trump’s personal matters.

However, Garten said he knew of no written retainer agreement between Trump and Cohen, though Trump’s attorneys “typically” had them. On being shown some of Trump’s ledgers, Garten also testified that “the vast majority” of attorney payments were accompanied by some description of the lawyers’ work, though there was no such description for the monthly $35,000 payments that went to Cohen throughout 2017. Company documents recorded them generally as legal expenses.

Garten said he sometimes referred to Cohen non-corporate matters involving Trump and his wife, Melania, but wasn’t sure what Cohen did about those things.

After hearing Garten’s testimony and arguments from both sides’ lawyers, Hellerstein said the evidence suggested that Cohen “was hired privately, not under color of any presidential office or related to it.”

“We have the invoices” showing what Cohen was paid, the judge noted. “But no proof of what he did.”

U.S. law allows criminal prosecutions to be moved from state to federal court if they involve actions taken by federal government officials as part of their official duties, among other qualifications.

While requests to move criminal cases from state to federal court are rarely granted, the prosecution of Trump is unprecedented.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is bringing the hush money case, has argued that nothing about the payoffs to either Cohen or the women involved Trump’s official duties as president.

If the case is moved to federal court, Trump’s lawyers could try to get the charges dismissed on the grounds that federal officials are immune from criminal prosecution over actions they take as part of their official job duties.

A shift to federal court would also mean that jurors would potentially be drawn not only from heavily Democratic Manhattan, where Trump is wildly unpopular, but also from a handful of suburban counties north of the city where he has more political support.

In state court, a criminal trial was set for March 25 — in the thick of the primary season before next year’s November presidential election. Trump is currently the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge ordered the Justice Department on Thursday to make public a redacted version of the affidavit it relied on when federal agents searched the Florida estate of former President Donald Trump to look for classified documents.

The directive from U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart came hours after federal law enforcement officials submitted under seal the portions of the affidavit that they want to keep secret as their investigation moves forward. The judge set a deadline of noon Friday for a redacted, or blacked-out, version of the document.

The order means the public could soon get at least some additional details about what led FBI officials to search Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 as part of an investigation into classified documents being retained at the Palm Beach property. Documents already made public as part of the investigation show that the FBI retrieved from the property 11 sets of classified documents, including information marked at the top secret level.

Search warrant affidavits typically contain vital information about an investigation, with agents spelling out why they want to search a particular property and why they believe they are likely to find evidence of a potential crime there.

In this case, though, the redactions proposed by the Justice Department are likely to be extensive given the sensitivity of the investigation and unprecedented nature of the search, lessening the chance that the public will receive a detailed glimpse of the basis for the search or the direction of the probe.

In his order Thursday, Reinhart said the department had made compelling arguments to leave sealed broad swaths of the document that, if disclosed, would reveal grand jury information; the identities of witnesses and “uncharged parties”; and details about the investigation’s “strategy, direction, scope, sources and methods.”

But he also said he was satisfied “that the Government has met its burden of showing that its proposed redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the Government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation and are the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire Affidavit.”

The department had earlier contested arguments by media organizations to make any portion of the affidavit public, saying the disclosure could contain private information about witnesses and about investigative tactics. But Reinhart, acknowledging the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, said last week that he was disinclined to keep the entire document sealed and told federal officials to submit to him in private the redactions it wanted to make.

Multiple news media organizations, including The Associated Press, argued in court last week for the disclosure of the affidavit, citing the extraordinary public interest in the federal search of a former president’s home. Trump and some of his supporters have also encouraged the document’s release.

After the Justice Department submitted its filing under seal on Thursday, the media coalition responded by asking the judge to unseal portions of the department’s brief and to direct the government, “going forward,” to file publicly a redacted version of any sealed document it submits. The groups noted that significant information about the investigation is already public.

“At a minimum, any portions of the Brief that recite those facts about the investigation, without revealing additional ones not yet publicly available — in addition to any other portions that pose no threat to the investigation — should be unsealed,” the news organizations wrote.

They added, “If and when additional facts come to light and are confirmed to be accurate, or certain facts no longer pose a threat to the investigation for any other reason, there is no justification for maintaining them under seal either.”

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A judge has banned the leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, from the nation’s capital after he was accused of vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church and found with high-capacity firearm magazines when he was arrested.

The order bans Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, 36, from entering the District of Columbia, with very limited exceptions to meet with his attorney or appear in court. It comes a day after he was arrested arriving in Washington ahead of protests planned by supporters of President Donald Trump to coincide with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s election victory.

Tarrio was arrested Monday by the Metropolitan Police Department and accused of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington last month. He was charged with destruction of property and is also facing a weapons charges after officers found him with the firearm magazines when he was arrested.

According to the criminal complaint, when police pulled Tarrio over on the warrant for vandalizing the Black Lives Matter sign, officers found two unloaded magazines emblazoned with the Proud Boys logo in his bag that have a capacity of 30 rounds each for AR-15 or M4-style weapons.

A large Black Lives Matter sign was ripped from Asbury United Methodist Church property, torn and set aflame in December. Tarrio was seen with the sign in video of the incident posted on YouTube, according to a police report.

Tarrio admitted to police, according to their report, that he posted a confession on the right-wing site Parler that he had set fire to the sign. “There was no hate crime committed,” he wrote. “It isn’t about the color of the someone’s skin. Against the wishes of my attorney I am here today to admit that I am the person responsible for the burning of this sign. And I am not ashamed of what I did because I didn’t do it out of hate … I did it out of love.”

Tarrio also said, according to a police report, that he sells the clips and the ones he was carrying were purchased by a customer. “I had a customer that bought those two mags, and they got returned ’cause it was a wrong address,” Tarrio said, according to court papers. “And I contacted him, and he’s like, ‘I’m going to be in DC,’ so I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ll take ‘em to you.’ So that I can show you proof ….I can give you, like my invoices and stuff like that from it, and, like, the USPS shipping label.”

He was arrested in a tunnel near the Capitol, ahead of what is expected to be large far-right protests gathering in D.C. according to Tarrio’s online postings: “The ProudBoys will turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th but this time with a twist,” saying they’d spread out incognito.

Tarrio’s attorney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

MICHAEL BALSAMO and COLLEEN LONG Associated Press

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