Former US President Donald Trump will be tried from March 4, 2024 in federal court in Washington for his attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 election, in the midst of the campaign to regain the White House.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over the proceedings, ruled on this date on Monday during a hearing devoted to the proposals of the two parties.
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith wanted Donald Trump’s trial in Washington to begin on January 2, 2024, a time too short for her to prepare, while the defense called for a distant deadline, in April, “well beyond of what is necessary”, according to the judge.
This date is not hasty, added the magistrate, stressing that the trial would open exactly three years, two months and six days after January 6, 2021. She was referring to the assault on the Capitol, seat of Congress, by hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump white-hot to prevent the certification of the victory of his Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
This will therefore be the first criminal trial for the favorite of the Republican primaries, who must also be tried from the end of March 2024 in New York State for suspicious payments to a former porn actress in May 2024. by a court in Florida (southeast) for his negligent management of confidential documents after his departure from the White House.
The date of his trial in a fourth case, that of electoral pressure in Georgia in 2020, an indictment which earned him his mugshot last week, an already historic cliché for a former president, has not yet been announced. been fixed.
Unsurprisingly, Judge Chutkan brushed aside most of the defense arguments, which claimed two and a half years, the equivalent of the duration of the investigation, to examine the prosecution documents.
Donald Trump’s attorney, John Lauro, vehemently railed against the prosecution’s proposed January 2024 date. “You’re asking for a show trial, not a quick trial,” he told the hearing.
“You’re not going to be two years older, this case won’t go to trial in 2026,” she said on Monday.
For the prosecution, prosecutor Molly Gaston invoked “the extraordinary public interest for a speedy trial”, given the fact that “the defendant is accused of historic crimes” for a president in office at the time of the facts.
The judge had already warned Donald Trump against any “inflammatory statement likely to pollute the selection of the jury”, which could only encourage the magistrate to set an early date for the trial.
That didn’t stop the Republican billionaire from accusing President Biden of being responsible for his indictments on Monday without evidence, again calling the Democratic leader a “scumbag”. The two men could once again be opposed during the presidential election of November 2024.
It was not immediately clear what impact this new date could have on Donald Trump’s busy court schedule, although Judge Chutkan said she had informed her colleague in charge of the trial in New York of her decision.
“I assume that the four judges in charge of these cases have tried to coordinate the order of the trials and that the prosecutors in New York and Georgia will postpone theirs in deference to the federal cases,” explained to AFP before the trial. Hearing Carl Tobias, law professor at the University of Richmond.
For Whit Ayres, a Republican political consultant, an acquittal for Trump at his first upcoming trial, whatever it is, would help make his lead in the Republican primaries irreversible.
“I don’t see how it would be possible to stop him” in his race for the nomination, he said in an online interview.
“But if he’s convicted on a serious charge, I don’t know how people would react,” he continued, “because we’ve never experienced a situation that remotely resembles this- this”.
28/08/2023 20:19:40 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP