Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and special counsel Jack Smith‘s team of prosecutors will fight over a proposed trial date Monday in Washington, D.C., as the GOP front-runner attempts to delay trial until after the 2024 election.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, will hear from both parties over their conflicting requests for trial starts. The former president and GOP front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination would like the trial to begin in April 2026, and Smith has asked Chutkan to start it on Jan. 2, 2024.
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Since his Aug. 3 “not guilty” plea to Smith’s charges accusing him of engaging in a 2020 election subversion plot, Trump has motioned to delay his trial until long after the election, when he could potentially be president again and have the power to appoint an attorney general who could shut down his federal criminal cases.
Trump’s defense submitted an Aug. 17 filing stating his team needed a substantial time extension to review more than 11.6 million documents from the government’s first batch of discovery. To read all of the records before the government’s proposed jury selection date of Dec. 11 would be like reading “Tolstoy’s War and Peace, cover to cover, 78 times a day, every day,” Trump’s team said.
Smith’s team pushed back on Lauro’s assertion that the defense would need to sift through the documents in part because attorneys review such records using electronic keyword searches and that most of the evidence shared by the Justice Department is already public domain.
Prosecutors have said they can prepare and identify individual exhibits they plan to use at the trial in advance if ordered by the judge. They have also indicated that roughly a quarter of the evidence contains classified materials and that they don’t plan to use such information in the Washington case against Trump, according to an Aug. 10 filing.
Trump pleaded not guilty on Aug. 3 to four federal felony charges over Smith’s accusations that he engaged in a scheme to overturn the will of voters and maintain power after losing the 2020 election, resulting in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Two counts relate to the disruption of Congress’s certification of the electoral vote on Jan. 6, one for allegedly scheming to defraud the United States, and a fourth charge of conspiracy to deprive citizens of their right to have their vote counted.
A previous hearing happened before the judge on Aug. 11, where she struck a compromise on a protective order guiding what Trump could speak freely about matters in the case so long as they weren’t deemed “sensitive,” but she also warned Trump not to make “inflammatory” statements — or else that risks a speedy start, which he doesn’t want.
The same special counsel’s office is also prosecuting Trump in Florida federal court for allegedly mishandling classified records after leaving the Oval Office in January 2021. The Florida trial is set for May, and Smith’s team has said any potential scheduling conflicts with that matter can be worked out on a case-by-case basis.
Trump’s legal schedule is pertinent to his time and public attention, as he may be inhibited at a crucial moment during the campaign cycle. If Chutkan gave Smith’s favor for a Jan. 2 trial start, it would take place less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses. He is also staring down two proposed trial dates in March, including one just before Super Tuesday, and beyond that, he would be head-to-head campaigning against President Joe Biden should he be selected as the GOP nominee.
Monday’s hearing before Chutkan will take place at 10 a.m., and the courthouse allows seating for members of the public and press to attend.
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The hearing follows Trump’s surrender to Fulton County, Georgia, officials on Thursday after he was charged on Aug. 15 in a sweeping 41-count racketeering indictment with 18 other defendants. District Attorney Fani Willis has called for an early March trial to start in that case, though legal experts strongly believe a state racketeering trial will need much more time before it can begin in the spring.
Trump also has been scheduled for a March 25, 2024, trial in a Manhattan criminal case over a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels on his behalf during the 2016 presidential campaign. Late last month, he appealed a decision that shut down his bid to move the case from state to federal court.
