Florida
Motion after motion puts Trump Florida case in slow motion as 3-day hearing begins
FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump is hearing arguments Friday on a long-shot defense effort to get the indictment thrown out based on the claim that the prosecutor who brought the charges was illegally appointed.
The arguments over the legality of special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment kick off a three-day hearing that is set to continue next week and bring further delays to a criminal case that had been scheduled for trial last month but has been snarled by a pileup of unresolved legal disputes. The motion questioning Smith’s selection and funding by the Justice Department is one of multiple challenges to the indictment the defense has raised, so far unsuccessfully, in the year since the charges were brought.
Even as Smith’s team looks to press forward on a prosecution seen by many legal experts as the most straightforward and clear-cut of the four prosecutions against Trump, Friday’s arguments before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon won’t involve discussion of the allegations against the former president. They’ll center instead on decades-old regulations governing the appointment of Justice Department special counsels like Smith, reflecting the judge’s continued willingness to entertain defense arguments that prosecutors say are meritless, contributing to the indefinite cancelation of a trial date.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, had exasperated prosecutors even before the June 2023 indictment by granting a Trump request to have an independent arbiter review the classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago — an order that was overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel.
Since then, she has been intensely scrutinized over her handling of the case, including for taking months to issue rulings and for scheduling hearings on legally specious claims — all of which have combined to make a trial before the November presidential election a virtual impossibility. She was rebuked in March by prosecutors after she asked both sides to formulate jury instructions and to respond to a premise of the case that Smith’s team called “fundamentally flawed.”
The New York Times, citing two anonymous sources, reported Thursday that two judges — including the chief federal judge in the southern district of Florida — urged Cannon to step aside from the case after she was assigned to it.
The hearing is unfolding just weeks after Trump was convicted in a separate state case in New York of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor who has said she had sex with him. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is set to issue a landmark opinion on whether Trump is immune from prosecution for acts he took in office or he can be be prosecuted by Smith’s team on charges that he schemed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
At issue in Friday’s hearing is a Trump team claim that Smith was illegally appointed in November 2022 by Attorney General Merrick Garland because he was not first approved by Congress and because the special counsel office that he was assigned to lead was not also created by Congress.
Smith’s team has said Garland was fully empowered as the head of the Justice Department to make the appointment and to delegate prosecutorial decisions to him. Prosecutors also note that courts have upheld prior appointments of special counsels, including Robert Mueller by Trump’s Justice Department.
On the agenda for next week are arguments over a limited gag order that prosecutors have requested to bar Trump from comments they fear could endanger the safety of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials involved in the case.
The restrictions were sought after Trump falsely claimed the agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents in August 2022 were prepared to kill him even though he was citing boilerplate language from standard FBI policy about use of force during the execution of search warrants. The FBI had intentionally selected a day for the search when it knew Trump and his family would be out of town.
Trump’s lawyers have said any speech restrictions would infringe on his free speech rights. Cannon initially rejected the request on technical grounds, saying prosecutors had not sufficiently conferred with defense lawyers before seeking the gag restrictions. But prosecutors subsequently renewed the request.
Another issue set to be discussed next week is a defense request to exclude from the case evidence seized by the FBI during the Mar-a-Lago search, and to dismiss the indictment because of evidence it includes that came from former members of Trump’s defense team.
Though attorney-client privilege protects defense lawyers from being forced to testify about their confidential conversations with clients, prosecutors can get around that shield if they can establish that the lawyer’s legal services are being used to further a crime.
That’s what happened last year in the classified documents investigation, with prosecutors in their indictment repeatedly citing details of conversations Trump had with M. Evan Corcoran, an attorney who represented the former president during the investigation and who was forced by a judge to appear before the grand jury investigating Trump .
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Tucker reported from Washington.
“Very clearly,” he said.
As for AJ Brown, two years Isaiah’s elder, not so much.
“Controversial ending,” he said.
Rewind to maybe a decade ago. Game point. Isaiah down 14-13. Next bucket wins. Isaiah tried using his bigger body to back his brother down, but AJ held firm. A drive to the left didn’t work. Drive right, same result. AJ walled up both times.
It was time to make things simple.
“I just backed away and threw up a shot,” Isaiah said. “It went in and I ran into the house.”
The historic victory was announced to the rest of the family, as Isaiah made way to his bedroom, followed closely behind by a protesting AJ. The game, apparently, was not over.
“We’re going to 21,” AJ said.
Back out they went.
The Browns’ basketball journeys – both together and individually – have been defined mostly by fierce competition that culminated with crowd-pleasing success. They won a two state championships together in high school. AJ became a mid-major standout at Ohio University in the Mid-American Conference. Isaiah, two years later, chose the high-major route, signed with Florida and celebrated a national championship as a freshman.
Now, in 2025, their paths that began in an Orlando driveway have converged two hours north, where AJ and Isaiah are now teammates for the Gators and – it just so happens – battling one another for backup minutes at the small forward and shooting guard positions.
And they’re totally cool with it.
Bottom: Cute kids mugging for the camera
“For me, it’s basketball. The better player wins,” AJ said. “Whatever the coaches see as the best fit for the season, that’s what it’s going to be. I mean, we’re going to be competitive. We’re going to be at each other’s throats. But at the end of the day it’s the coaches’ decision.”
Also, at the end of the day, they’re brothers; the first sibling tandem, in fact, to team up for Florida men’s basketball since Dwayne and Travis Schintzius played half the infamous 1989-90 season together (before that, it was Joe and Pat Lawrence from 1984-87).
“There is never going to be bad blood between AJ and me,” said Isaiah, who goes by “Zay” to his team. “It’s more like, if he plays, I’m glad. ‘Yeah, go for it.’ If I’m playing, he’s going to cheer for me.”
Coach Todd Golden, entering his fourth season at Florida and seventh as a head coach, has a system based on rotation of eight or nine players that gets squeezed as the season goes deeper.
The Gators are stocked in the front court and that includes with junior Thomas Haugh, arguably the best sixth man in the country last season, locked in at the “3” spot after playing almost exclusively as a backup “4” the last two years. It is the backup role to Haugh – as well as the third shooting guard behind Princeton transfer Xaivian Lee and returning junior Urban Klavzar – where the Brown brothers are fighting for minutes in the rotation.
Through the first month of fall practice, freshman CJ Ingram distinguished himself at the backup “3” and has played large chunks of practice on the blue (or front-line) squad during full-contact scrimmages.
AJ and Isaiah, meanwhile, have been almost exclusively running with the white (or scout) team and looking to make their mark. There’s still time to do so.
“They’ve both been up and down, but they’re competing and that’s all we ask,” said UF associate head coach Korey McCray, who tutors the guards and is quick to remind the reserves how three of the starter’s on last season’s 36-4 squad missed games due to injuries. “What it looks like today may not be what it looks like that tomorrow. You have to stay ready.”
The coaching staff, in turn, must have a hand in that.
“You keep coaching them, keep encouraging them, but it has to come from themselves,” said Taurean Green, who oversees player development. “They’re both older players now. Zay is in his second year. AJ is a veteran college player. This is his fourth year. They know what to expect in college basketball. They’ve got to be able to bring it consistently. They know what it takes to play at a high level and what it takes to win.”
AJ is 21 with 62 career games and 731 points. Isaiah is 19, with just 19 games and 36 points on his short resume. The Browns were five years younger when they won the first of back-to-back Class 2A state championships at Orlando Christian Prep. AJ once scored 35 in game. Isaiah later topped that with 45.
So, yeah, they know how to win, but they also have individual games that aren’t much alike. That’s fitting. They also don’t look much alike, despite both being 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds.
“You should see my twin sister,” AJ said. “She looks nothing like me.”
Added Isaiah: “The best way to explain it is that he’s more Type A and I’m more Type B. I’m going to let it happen, he’s going to make it happen. Honestly, I think that’s the only way we’re different because we both love to laugh, listen to the same music and are strong in our faiths. We’re common in so many ways.”
But not basketball.
Here’s how father Ronald Brown Jr. described his sons’ respective skill sets: “Finesse player versus a brute.”
AJ is the former. At Ohio, he averaged 11.4 points over his three seasons, with a career-high of 28 in the 2023 Mid-American Conference Tournament game against Ball State as a freshman (earlier that season, AJ scored 14 points in an 82-48 loss to UF at Tampa). As a senior, he finished at 13.2 points a game on 47.1% from the floor, 38.8 from the 3-point line and 82.0% from the free-throw line. For context, his 139 makes from distance were 22 more than Walter Clayton Jr. banged last season for the Gators. At his best, he can stroke it.
But while a run of double-digit scoring in 15 of 16 games in ’25, AJ suffered a season-ending shoulder injury against rival Miami-Ohio. Six weeks later, he watched on television as Florida defeated Houston for the NCAA title in San Antonio on April 7.
“I was so happy for my brother. I felt like I was there,” he said.
AJ went into the transfer portal and followed his younger sibling to UF. Less than a month into his Gainesville arrival, AJ underwent surgery to fix his shoulder, then spent almost the entire summer rehabbing before being cleared for full-contact work just before the start of official fall practice. The potential for a medical redshirt ’25-26 season is something he has not ruled out. Whatever happens, AJ’s return to being the hot-shooting Ohio Bobcat version of himself is progressing.
“Honestly, the Lord has been good to our family,” Ronald Brown said. “AJ had other options and, truth be told, he really loved playing for Ohio. But the opportunity came up and it was something, as a family, we sat down and talked about. Even for AJ, as many years as he was at Ohio and how much he played, he understood that coming to Florida was like starting over again. Everything was going to be different. Everything was going to be harder. But playing with his brother was ultimately why he made the decision.”
Isaiah, a lefty with bounce, totaled 71 minutes as a collegiate rookie last season, with his most meaningful on-court time (six minutes) coming in a Southeastern Conference home game against Vanderbilt with Clayton sidelined by an ankle injury. He had nine points (with a pair of 3s) in seven minutes earlier in the season against Florida A&M and seven points and four rebounds in 10 minutes against North Florida. He is, by far, the better athlete of the two brothers, with the ability to draw on that athleticism to be physical when determined to do so.
Even AJ admits as much.
“Not everybody can be blessed with a 40-inch vertical jump,” he said.
Though he combined to play just three minutes in the Gators’ six NCAA Tournament games, the sight of Isaiah in tears and hugging best friend Micah Handlogten amid the post-game national final celebration at the Alamodome made clear what the season meant to him.
“One of the things that he understands was that he might not have played on the court, but he was part of the program and helping guys get better each and every day,” Ronald Brown said. “A lot of people don’t understand or appreciate how much the day-to-day routine and practice matter.”
Fast forward to present day.
The Browns play almost exclusively on the white team during scrimmages. In facing Haugh, Alex Condon, Reuben Chinyelu and friends, some days are tougher than others for the backups, which only means they need to increase their toughness. Play through. Compete.
Two weekends ago, for example, the white defeated the blue in an O’Dome scrimmage, much to the delight of the coaches (and the irritation of the starters). The Browns, after a stretch of some struggles that week, were terrific that day. Isaiah, especially.
When at their best, according to Green:
* On Isaiah: “A big, athletic, physical SEC body. He has a high motor. When he plays under control he is an effective player. Just needs to keep the game simple. Crash hard, throw his body around.”
* On AJ: “He needs to get his rhythm back and hunt shots. He’s a very good shooter. He’s got a slow and smooth release, but he’s a smart enough player to get it off and know he has to be aggressive on offense. It’s harder on the white team, but they’ve been practicing long enough to understand what they’re up against, who they’re up against and what they need to do.”
In other words, keep working, keep competing as if it was a driveway grudge match.
Email senior writer Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu Find his story archives here.
All fall practices and scrimmages are open to the public. Fans can access the concourse through Gate 3 of Condron Family Ballpark (located directly behind home plate).
Below is the current practice schedule for week three. All practice and approximate scrimmage times are subject to change.
| Date | Practice | Scrimmage |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, Oct. 20 | OFF | OFF |
| Tuesday, Oct. 21 | 2:00 PM | NONE |
| Wednesday, Oct. 22 | 2:00 PM | 3:45 PM |
| Thursday, Oct. 23 | 2:00 PM | NONE |
| Friday, Oct. 24 | 2:00 PM | 3:45 PM |
| Saturday, Oct. 25 | 10:00 AM | 12:00 PM |
| Sunday, Oct. 26 | 10:00 AM | 11:45 AM |
| Monday, Oct. 27 | OFF | OFF |
*Scrimmages typically begin approximately 90 minutes to two hours into each practice
Additionally, Florida’s fall season features exhibition games against JU in Jacksonville (Oct. 31) and Georgia Southern at Condron Family Ballpark (Nov. 10). Tickets for the Florida-Jacksonville exhibition are currently available for purchase.
Important Fall Dates
| Friday, Oct. 31 | 6:30 PM | Florida vs. JU (in Jacksonville) |
| Sunday, Nov. 9 | 1:00 PM | Florida vs. Georgia Southern (Condron Family Ballpark) |
Stay informed on all the most-recent news on Florida baseball by checking FloridaGators.com and following @GatorsBB on social media.
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Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier is out as the decision-maker in Gainesville after being relieved of his duties on Sunday afternoon.
After compiling a 22-23 record across four seasons with the program, the administration has made the move to part ways and begin a search for the new head coach.
“[Sunday] I met with Coach Napier and informed him that a change in leadership of our football program would best serve the interests of the University of Florida,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said in a statement.
“On behalf of Gator Nation, I want to sincerely thank Billy and his family for their tireless commitment to the Florida Gators. Billy built a tremendous culture of accountability and growth among the young men he led each day. His organized and detailed approach had a meaningful impact across all levels of our program.
“As Coach Napier has often said, this is a results-driven business, and while his influence was positive, it ultimately did not translate into the level of success we expect on the field.”
With Napier out, there’s a significant chance the Florida roster undergoes serious changes this offseason. Which players should LSU target if they enter the NCAA Transfer Portal?
No. 1: QB DJ Lagway
The odds are likely that Lagway will enter the NCAA Transfer Portal this offseason after committing to Napier and Co. out of high school whille developing a relationship with the decision-maker.
The sophomore signal-caller hasn’t been perfect – specifically against LSU when he tossed a handful of interceptions – but he’s a quarterback that you can’t pass up on if he’s available.
No. 2: WR Vernell Brown
The true freshman wide receiver has made his presence felt in Gainesville this season while leading the Gators in receptions [32] and yards [463] by a significant margin.
Brown has emerged as Lagway’s top target where the two have developed significant rapport with the likelihood he enters the portal somewhat high.
No. 3: RB Jadan Baugh
The sophomore running back has emerged as one of the top players in the Southeastern Conference this season while logging 611 yards on 117 carries to go along with four touchdowns.
Baugh has been sensational this season and will be a hot commodity if he enters the NCAA Transfer Portal.
With Napier out of the equation, the offseason will be one of intrigue for the Florida Gators. From the coaching search to the reconstruction of the roster, all eyes will be on Gainesville across the next few months.
For the LSU Tigers, there will be an opportunity to develop relationships with multiple members of the roster if they elect to depart the Sunshine State.
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Follow Zack Nagy on Twitter: @znagy20 and LSU Tigers On SI: @LSUTigersSI for all coverage surrounding the LSU Tigers.
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