For multiple reasons, former President Donald Trump would like to delay the start of his several pending criminal trials until after the presidential election is held in November.

Such an outcome looks increasingly likely in Trump's classified documents case in South Florida, where presiding Judge Aileen Cannon faces mounting criticism and scrutiny for her "plodding pace" in handling various pre-trial motions and hearings, according to The Hill.

The general consensus from Cannon's critics is that the delays in the case are due either to her inexperience and incompetence as a federal trial judge or that she is a partisan who is biased in favor of the former president who appointed her to the bench she now sits on.

Judge Cannon criticized for slow pace of documents case

Though Judge Cannon has been sharply criticized over her handling of former President Trump's classified documents case since even before he was indicted -- she handled the immediate aftermath of the FBI's August 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid -- the criticism has ramped up substantially over the past few weeks or so, especially after she canceled the previous tentative trial start date in May.

That is because Cannon has held multiple hearings recently on Trump's various motions to dismiss the indictment, suppress the evidence, and even challenge the appointment and funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith -- motions that critics contend should have been summarily dismissed or decided swiftly and solely on the filed briefs.

"There’s nothing -- nothing -- about the way she has handled the case that is normal, that is usual, and that makes a degree of sense -- except that she’s just so inexperienced or second, that she’s just not confident, or third, that she is so biased to Trump," former federal Judge Nancy Gertner told The Hill. "By not setting a trial date, by not deciding motions, she is simply slow-walking the case, and that is clearly in Trump’s interest."

Why Trump wants his trials delayed

The Associated Press reported in March that former President Trump and his attorneys were open and honest about their obvious tactic of seeking delays in his multiple criminal prosecutions at the federal and state level.

The delays benefit Trump in a couple of different ways, especially as November's election draws near, the first of which is to bolster his argument that the prosecutions are politically motivated and intended to interfere in said election by distracting him with legal issues, keeping him in courtrooms instead of on the campaign trail, and forcing the diversion of funds raised to cover his legal expenses instead of campaign expenditures.

Another possible benefit comes into play if the trials are delayed until after the election, at which point Trump could, presuming he won re-election, either issue a pardon for himself or instruct his Justice Department to drop the charges against him.

Judge Cannon's "foot-dragging" benefits Trump

The Hill reported that former federal prosecutor Jeff Robbins, a critic of Judge Cannon who previously worked for Senate Democrats, said, "There will not be a trial in this case until after the election, thus paving the way for a 50 percent -- roughly speaking -- possibility that the defendant in that case will be in a position to either pardon himself or instruct that the case against him be dropped."

"Every delay pushes this all back, and the Trump team has given her almost limitless opportunities to not act on things or to push things back," he continued. "And rather than taking the judicial bull by the horns, and firmly establishing schedules, prompt schedules, as the vast, vast majority of other federal judges would do, certainly in a case like this, she has foot-dragged."

"Whether the foot-dragging is because, as some have speculated, she’s quite insecure and inexperienced and doesn’t know how to control her docket, or [if] it’s because some part of her feels as though she’s inclined to let this bump along, and if it was helpful to the person who appointed her, that’s not such a bad thing -- one doesn’t know,” Robbins added. "One or the other or both are true."

The judge is just doing her job as she best sees fit

Countering Judge Cannon's many detractors, however, are those who have stepped up to defend her, such as law professor Jonathan Turley, who observed in a recent New York Post op-ed that Cannon is justifiably displaying due diligence in carefully handling all matters in Trump's documents case, and noted that she has ruled both for and against the defense and prosecution throughout the proceedings.

Turley also highlighted the glaring hypocrisy of Cannon's critics who've repeatedly smeared her after previously hyperventilating over Trump and his supporters for daring to utter even a single critical word against any of the other less friendly and overtly Democrat-aligned judges who have presided over the former president's other criminal and civil cases.