Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has requested a trial date of Aug. 5 for former President Donald Trump and his remaining co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case.
The suggested start is exactly three months before the 2024 presidential election, a period during which Trump, the Republican presidential primary front-runner, would likely be hitting the campaign trail hard if he were to be the GOP nominee.
“This proposed trial date balances potential delays from Defendant Trump’s other criminal trials in sister sovereigns and the other Defendants’ constitutional speedy trial rights,” Willis wrote in a Friday filing to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee.
The district attorney noted that Trump, 77, is currently slated to go on trial March 4 in Washington in the federal 20220 election interference case, and in Florida on May 20 to face charges of keeping national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office.
“A start date of August 5, 2024, is therefore unlikely to be subject to delay or interference from these other trials,” she adds.
Trump is also set to go on trial on March 25 in Manhattan over accusations that he falsified business records in connection to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Willis also asked the judge to set a final deadline of June 21 to accept negotiated guilty pleas and requested that McAfee not consider any requests from defendants to sever their trials from one another until after that date.
Four of the 19 people charged in Willis’ sprawling indictment alleging a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the 2020 Georgia election results have agreed to plea deals in the case – former Trump-aligned attorneys Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro and Atlanta-based bail bondsman Scott Hall.
A Georgia grand jury indicted Trump on 13 felony counts in August, including racketeering, conspiracy, false statements and asking a public official to violate their oath of office.
Willis, an elected Democrat, insisted during an appearance at the Washington Post’s Global Women’s Summit on Tuesday that the 2024 election cycle did not play into her calculus for bringing forward the case and suggested that Trump’s case would go to trial and could drag on into 2025.
“I believe in that case there will be a trial. I believe the trial will take many months,” Willis said. “And I don’t expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025.”
Trump has been hit with a total of 91 felony counts across the four indictments brought against him this year, and he faces a maximum of 712 years and six months behind bars if convicted and given the maximum sentence on all counts.
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