The Georgia prosecutor leading the election-interference case against former president Donald Trump and 14 remaining co-defendants requested a trial date of Aug. 5, 2024, in a motion filed Friday afternoon.
The request, made to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, notes that two criminal cases against Trump in federal court are scheduled for March and May, respectively, so an August start date in the Georgia case is “unlikely to be subject to delay or interference from these other trials.”
The motion does not mention new uncertainty about one of those cases, a federal case unfolding in Florida that accuses Trump and others of mishandling classified documents. While the case is still scheduled for May, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said last week that she will revisit deadlines in the case in early March.
The Fulton motion also sets a final plea hearing date of June 21, after which prosecutors will not entertain negotiated plea deals from defendants. It also argues against any consideration before that date of splitting up the case into multiple trials because of the number of defendants — and suggests that prosecutors will argue strenuously against any severing at all. So far, four of the original defendants have accepted negotiated plea deals.
Because all the defendants have been charged under Georgia’s anti-racketeering statute, the same evidence would have to be presented for all of them.
Quoting federal precedent, the filing states: “It would impair both the efficiency and the fairness of the criminal justice system to require … that prosecutors bring separate proceedings, presenting the same evidence again and again, requiring victims and witnesses to repeat the inconvenience (and sometimes trauma) of testifying, and randomly favoring the last-tried defendants who have the advantage of knowing the prosecution’s case beforehand.”
The motion is sure to draw vociferous objections from the defendants — notably Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, who, if nominated, would be forced to sit in an Atlanta courtroom day after day in the final weeks of the general-election campaign, and possibly on Election Day itself and into 2025.
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer in the Georgia case, said he planned to file a motion later Friday objecting to the proposed trial date. The motion, Sadow said, will read as follows: “President Trump respectfully notifies the Court that he opposes the State’s ‘motion to schedule a trial date for August 5, 2024, and requests the opportunity to present oral argument in opposition to the motion at a hearing to be held at a time convenient to the Court.”
The government’s motion, signed personally by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, makes no mention of the election calendar next year. But in an appearance at The Washington Post on Tuesday, Willis objected to the idea that a person who commits a crime should not be held accountable because they are running for office.
“I don’t, when making decisions about cases to bring, consider any election cycle or an election season,” Willis said. “That does not go into the calculus. What goes into the calculus is: This is the law. These are the facts. And if the facts show you violated the law, then charges are brought,” Willis said.
She added: “It would be a really sad day if, when you’re under investigation for this shoplifting charge, you could go run for city council, and the investigation would stop. That’s foolishness, and it’s foolishness at any level. ”
In that interview at The Washington Post Live’s Global Women’s Summit, Willis (D) acknowledged that the anticipated trial could be ongoing on Election Day 2024 and possibly still underway on Inauguration Day.
“I believe in that case there will be a trial. I believe the trial will take many months. And I don’t expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025,” Willis said.
In the filing Friday, Willis wrote: “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.”
The sweeping Fulton indictment, unsealed in August, accused Trump and 18 co-defendants — including Rudy Giuliani, his former personal attorney; Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff; former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark; and former Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer — of a wide-ranging conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.
The charges fall into several buckets of alleged criminal behavior: the meeting of the Trump slate of presidential electors in Atlanta; Trump’s pressure campaign seeking help from multiple Georgia state officials in reversing his defeat; a breach of election equipment in rural Coffee County, Ga., in a hunt for evidence of fraud; and harassment of two local election workers in Fulton County who were falsely accused of counting fraudulent ballots on election night. The case is separate from the federal election interference investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, in which only Trump has been charged so far.
Holly Bailey in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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