The odds against Donald Trump facing trial before the presidential election on charges of withholding classified documents from the government at his Palm Beach estate rose dramatically Tuesday when a federal judge indefinitely postponed the former president’s originally scheduled May 20 trial.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the documents case at the Fort Pierce federal courthouse, found that “the finalization of a trial date at this juncture ... would be imprudent and inconsistent with the court’s duty” to resolve numerous legal issues “necessary to present this case to a jury.”

Cannon rescheduled various pressing matters, including a motion to dismiss the indictment for selective and vindictive prosecution as well as the use of sensitive national security records at trial, through the end of July.

Her decision comes as Trump, the expected Republican nominee for president in November, is on trial in New York on criminal charges of paying hush-money to a porn star, and hiding that in order to boost his election chances in the 2016 presidential election.

After hearing oral arguments in April, the U.S. Supreme Court is also preparing to issue an opinion on whether Trump has immunity against criminal prosecution.

Hanging in the balance is not only Trump’s classified documents case but his federal trial in Washington, D.C., and state trial in Georgia on charges accusing him of interfering in the outcome of the November 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. It is possible that the documents trial, along with the two others, could be postponed until after their expected rematch in the November election.

If Trump were to beat Biden in that race, then as president he would be in a position to ask the Justice Department to drop all of the pending charges against him.

Cannon’s procedural but significant ruling follows her decision in April rejecting Trump’s bid to throw out the classified documents case, concluding that the Presidential Records Act “does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss” the 42-count indictment.

Trump’s lawyers argued at a hearing in March in the Fort Pierce federal courthouse that he designated the documents as his own personal property when he took them from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach after leaving office and therefore he had the authority to keep them.

In her three-page order, Cannon rejected the Trump legal team’s reasoning, saying most of the counts in the indictment fall under the Espionage Act, which states that without authorization it is illegal to retain any national defense documents and fail to turn them over to the U.S. government. She noted that the indictment’s 32 espionage charges make no reference to the Presidential Records Act. She also pointed out that the remaining obstruction of justice and other charges are not based on the Presidential Records Act either.

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