(COMBO) This mixture of images created on August 5, 2023 shows special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, DC, on August 1, 2023 and former US President Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 8, 2022.
Getty Images
Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday proposed a Jan. 2 start date for former President Donald Trump’s trial on criminal charges related to attempting to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden within the 2020 presidential election.
Smith in a filing in Washington, D.C., federal court argued that that trial date would “vindicate the general public’s strong interest in a speedy trial.”
That interest is “of particular significance” in a case involving an ex-president accused of conspiring to subvert a democratic election and “discount residents’ legitimate votes,” Smith wrote within the eight-page filing.
The prosecutor estimated that his case would take now not than 4 to 6 weeks to present to jurors.
The filing also said that the special counsel expects to have “substantially accomplished” the production of evidence to be turned over to Trump by Aug. 28, when the parties are set to fulfill for a standing conference. Smith suggested in one other filing that a trial date can be set on that day.
Trump’s lawyers are as a result of suggest their very own trial date next week.
But Trump himself lashed out at Smith’s proposed schedule, which he argued is designed to harm his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“Deranged Jack Smith has just asked for a trial on the Biden Indictment to happen on January 2nd., just ahead of the essential Iowa Caucuses,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.
“Only an out of touch lunatic would ask for such a date, ONE DAY into the Latest 12 months, and maximum Election Interference with IOWA!” Trump wrote. “Such a trial, which should never happen as a result of my First Amendment Rights, and large BIDEN CORRUPTION, should only occur, if in any respect, AFTER THE ELECTION. The identical with other Fake Biden Indictments. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”
The proposed timeline would start the D.C. trial nearly five months before jury selection begins in Trump’s other federal case in Miami, which centers on his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in each cases.
His legal team previously proposed that the Florida case mustn’t head to trial before the November 2024 presidential election, where Trump hopes to compete because the Republican nominee.
The primary-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 15.
That very same day, Trump is scheduled to face trial in Manhattan federal court for a civil lawsuit filed by the author E. Jean Carroll. In that case, Trump is accused of defaming Carroll in statements he made during and after his presidency denying her allegation that he raped her in a Manhattan department store within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.
Trump didn’t appear in court within the recent trial for an analogous lawsuit also brought by Carroll. In that case, a civil jury awarded her $5 million after finding that Trump sexually abused her, and had defamed her in statements made last fall.
Smith said in Thursday’s filing that despite suggestions by Trump’s lawyers that the federal Speedy Trial Act is just intended to guard a defendant’s rights, each that law and the U.S. Structure vests the best to a fast trial “in the general public, not only the defendant.”
“The Government is ready at this moment to supply to the defendant nearly all of discovery on this case, including materials that exceed its obligations,” the filing said.
That material includes grand jury transcripts, witness interviews, evidence obtained through search warrants and documents from the special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Smith said.
“The Government’s proposed trial date represents an appropriate balance of the defendant’s
right to organize a defense and the general public’s strong interest in a speedy trial within the case,” he wrote.
