Donald Trump‘s federal trial on charges he conspired to overturn the 2020 election will begin on March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday.
U.S. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan made the ruling Monday.
Prosecutor Molly Gaston had asked for a trial to begin “as soon as possible” due to Trump’s social media posts talking about witnesses and evidence, according to The Washington Post.
MSNBC reporter Ken Dilanian told José Díaz-Balart Reports that the judge agreed wholly with the prosecution.
“Jose, in a stark repudiation of Donald Trump’s attorneys, Judge Tanya Chutkan has set a trial date for March 4th of next year in this case. That’s the date jury selection would begin,” Dilanian said, continuing:
That’s just two months later than what the prosecution had asked for, but it’s in a world away from the April 2026 timeline that Trump’s attorneys had wanted. And immediately after she made her ruling, Trump attorney John Lauro put on the record, he said, “We will not be able to provide adequate representation. So, there’s no doubt in our judgment that this trial date is inconsistent with President Trump’s right to due process and effective assistance of counsel.”
So, laying the groundwork for an appeal there, but legal experts say this is really the judge’s call. This is a tough issue to get overturned in the appeals court. Obviously the Trump team is going to try to do that.
But Judge Tanya Chutkan heard from both sides in this hearing, and she heard the Trump team make an impassioned plea, that there’s just so much material in discovery here, so many witnesses interviews, so many transcripts of phone calls and emails and communications, that they needed years and years to go through all this material.
But the prosecution, the special counsel, countered that that just wasn’t the case. That a lot of this evidence had already been made public in the January 6th committee hearings, a lot of it came from Donald Trump’s own files and devices and were witnesses he was well familiar with. And the judge flatly sided with the prosecution here, and both the prosecution and the judge said the public has an interest in seeing this case go to trial rather quickly.
This is a breaking story and has been updated.
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