Donald Trump’s defense proposed on Thursday that the former US president’s trial for attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election begin in April 2026.
Presiding Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a hearing for August 28 to set a trial date and asked both sides for proposals before deciding.
Last week, the special counsel in charge of the case, Jack Smith, had proposed that Donald Trump’s trial in federal court in Washington begin on January 2, 2024, predicting that it “should not last more than four to six weeks.” .
This date “represents an appropriate balance between the defendant’s right to prepare his defense and the strong public interest in a speedy trial” in such an emblematic case, in which a former president is accused of having weakened federal institutions, Smith argued.
“The public interest is in a fair and just trial, not in a rush to a trial,” Donald Trump’s lawyers defended Thursday.
The Republican defense asserted that it could take several years to examine the 11.5 million pages of documents that are part of the process.
If the term proposed by the Public Ministry were chosen, “even supposing that we begin to examine these documents today, we would have to go at a rate of 99,762 pages per day (…) to finish on time,” said the lawyers. .
The defense added that a trial in April 2026 would allow a fair preparation of the case and not disturb the other proceedings against the former president, which already have sessions scheduled for March and May 2024.
Trump views the legal charges as an attempt at “election interference” by Democrats and has insisted that the trials take place after the November 2024 presidential election.
Despite mounting lawsuits, the businessman remains the favorite for the Republican nomination.
This is the fourth criminal case against the former president and the second in which he is accused of trying to subvert the electoral results, along with another, according to which he tried to cause fraud in the results of the 2020 presidential elections in the State. from georgia
On Thursday, Trump canceled a press conference, scheduled for Monday, in which he had promised to present “a lengthy, complex, detailed but irrefutable report on the presidential voter fraud that took place in Georgia.”
“My lawyers prefer to place this, I believe, irrefutable and compelling evidence of voter fraud and irregularities as formal legal records,” said the mogul, on his social network, Truth Social.
Source: TSF
