The federal judge overseeing the case in Washington charging former President Donald Trump with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election set the trial to begin on March 4.
In choosing the date, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan denied a request from the former president’s defense team to push the trial back until April 2026 and also rebuffed a proposal from Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith to begin the trial as soon as January.
“These proposals are obviously very far apart,” she said. “Neither of them is acceptable.”
“My primary concern here, as it is in every case, is the interest of justice and that I've balanced the defendant's right to adequately prepare.”
Trump, the GOP front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, faces a four-count indictment that accuses him of interfering with the peaceful transfer of power in the wake of the 2020 presidential election and inciting a violent insurrection at the Capitol.
The former president faces a cumulative four indictments and 91 felony counts. The other cases against him include one in New York state court for hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, one in federal court in Florida for mishandling classified documents, and one in Georgia state court for leading a racketeering scheme to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in that state.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all the cases against him and continues to repeat unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged and stolen.”
“It’s all a BIG LIE,” he posted to his social media site TruthSocial prior to Chutkan setting the trial date.
His defense team has sought to delay the case in Washington and others until after the presidential election, making an impassioned plea on Monday morning that it would be impossible for them to prepare a defense due to the 12 million pages of discovery handed over to them by Smith and his team of prosecutors.
But Chutkan, ahead of announcing the March 4 date, said she would provide a reasonable amount of time for the defense to prepare and underscored that the defense team would not have to read all 12 million pages of discovery since much of it is duplicative and because prosecutors handed over the discovery in an organized manner and made it keyword-searchable.
“I don't doubt from it that you're working diligently, but I will say that you and I have a very, very different estimate of what of the time that's needed to prepare for this case,” Chutkan told Trump lawyer John Lauro.
