A Georgia prosecutor filed a motion on Thursday moving up a proposed trial date for Donald Trump and his allies to October in the sprawling case accusing the former president and more than a dozen other defendants of election interference.
Fani Willis, the Atlanta district attorney who brought the case against Trump, initially proposed that the trial begin on March 4, landing squarely in the middle of Trump’s other trial dates amid a busy legal calendar for the former president heading into the 2024 election. But after Kenneth Chesebro, a former Trump attorney and fellow defendant, filed a request for a speedy trial this week, Willis requested that the court set the trial to begin for “all 19 defendants” in just two months.
“Without waiving any objection as to the sufficiency of Defendant Kenneth John Chesebro’s filing, the State requests that this Court specially set the trial in this case to commence on October 23, 2023,” Willis wrote in the filing, noting that the date falls within the next court term, in accordance with Georgia criminal code.
Analysts have noted that even the initial March timeline for the trial to get underway is improbable, with a lengthy period of pre-trial motions expected to delay proceedings. Already a number of defendants have motioned to remove the case to federal court, in the first examples of pre-trial delays. But a trial set to begin in just a matter of weeks appears nearly impossible.
The indictment, which was handed up by a Georgia grand jury earlier this month, accuses Trump and his allies of orchestrating a criminal enterprise to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump is expected to surrender on Thursday to Fulton County authorities for booking.
Trump faces trials in New York in a case in which he stands accused of paying hush money to a porn star and in federal court in Florida on charges he mishandled classified documents. Those cases are currently scheduled to begin on March 25 and May 20. And if things go prosecutors’ way in the election conspiracy case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, Trump would face another trial in the nation’s capital in early January.
