Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump, along with 16 co-defendants, will not go to trial in October with two other defendants in the Georgia election subversion case but will move forward on their own schedule, with a trial date yet to be announced. , Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee announced Thursday.
The two remaining co-defendants, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have requested speedy trials and are scheduled to begin in October.
McAfee’s order shut down an effort by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to have all 19 defendants tried together in October.
“Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s politically motivated, misguided attempt to deny President Trump due process of law by arguing that no severance should be granted has failed in court,” a Trump spokeswoman said. “Willis’s irrational rush to judgment to please his radical political base fails.”
While McAfee has not set a trial date for Trump and 16 of his co-defendants, the timeline he set in a court order Thursday means they won’t go to trial until at least December.
The new schedule laid out by the judge signals that he wants to start hashing out disputes before the trial of the batch of 17 defendants by the end of the year. The judge ordered discovery to begin on October 6.
However, no timeline has been set for the trial for the 17 defendants and none for resolving disputes over what evidence can be presented to the jury. McAfee ordered that other types of pretrial motions be filed by Dec. 1, but he has not scheduled a hearing on those requests.
In the course of McAfee outlined, federal courts have time to respond to efforts by some defendants in the case to move their prosecutions to federal court.
The Georgia election subversion case is one of four criminal cases pending against the former president, who is also involved in a number of civil matters that are also clogging up his legal calendar as the 2024 election cycle heats up.
McAfee’s order confirms that the Fulton County prosecution against Trump will not go to trial this year, and it presents the possibility that it may compete against trials scheduled for the first half of next year in three other criminal charges against Trump.
One of the cases is the federal election subversion case brought by special counsel Jack Smith against Trump in Washington, DC, which will now go to trial in early March. Smith took a more lenient approach than Willis against Trump, and indicted him on his own, without any co-defendants.
The trial date for Trump’s prosecution by Manhattan prosecutors for an alleged hush-money scheme in his 2016 campaign appears to be moving forward. Also originally scheduled for March 2024, the judge in that case signaled this week that he was open to moving the start date to accommodate Trump’s increasingly complicated legal calendar.
The special counsel’s case alleging Trump mishandled classified documents is set for a trial to begin in a federal court in Florida in late May.
While he is juggling these various criminal charges – as well as the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against his business and family that will be settled in October, as well as defamation proceedings related of his assaults on a woman who accused him of sexual assault. – Trump is ramping up for the 2024 presidential race, where he is leading the GOP nomination.
He argued that prosecutors’ attempt to bring him to trial in the coming months was a political effort to interfere in the 2024 election. They argue that the public has a vested interest in seeing him and his criminal codefendants quickly tried, and that there are no legitimate legal reasons to push the trials in his cases until after the 2024 election.
Arguing that the 19 defendants in his case should be tried together in an expedited timeline, Willis argued that breaking the case “into several lengthy trials would create an enormous burden on judicial resources of the Fulton County Superior Court.”
McAfee’s new order does not indicate whether he is considering further breaking the 17 defendants who were not tried in October into smaller groups, but it is a suggestion that some of the defendants are already floating.
“Three or more simultaneous, high-profile trials will create many security issues and create unavoidable burdens on witnesses and victims, who will be forced to testify three or more times in same set of facts in the same case,” prosecutors in Willis’ office said in a filing this week.
In addition, several of the defendants in the Georgia case have parallel proceedings in federal courts pending. Those defendants — who include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and three defendants accused of involvement in the voter fraud scheme — seek to transfer the Fulton County prosecution against them to federal court, where they will seek immunity under the protections provided to agents of the US government in certain circumstances.
If any of the appeals are successful, it’s unclear what the rest of Willis’ case will mean.
A federal judge rejected Meadows’ bid to move his case to federal court, but the decision is on appeal and a federal appeals court will hear arguments Friday at the request of the former White House counsel. for an emergency order that would halt state court proceedings. in his case.
This story has been updated with additional information.
